J LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. J 



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f UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, f 



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EARNEST ADDRESS 



NEW ZEALAND COLONISTS, 



WITH REFERENCE TO 



THEIR INTERCOURSE WITH THE 
NATIVE INHABITANTS. 



THE REV. MONTAGUE HAWTREY, M.A. 

OF TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE. 



Honour all Men. 1 Peter, ii. 17a «f Con«- 

V N * 



1867 



LONDON: 
JOHN W. PARKER, WEST STRAND. 

M.DCCC.XI,. 




London : 
Harbison and Co., Printers, 
St. Martin's Lank. 



ADVERTISEMENT. 



It will be seen that the following pages were 
written at different periods during the past year, 
having been begun shortly after the departure of the 
first portion of the colony, and continued at various 
intervals, and with many interruptions, till the 
present time. 

Several causes have concurred to hinder their 
earlier completion; among these may be reckoned 
the necessity of attending to professional avocations, 
and the great difficulty and importance of the question 
considered, — a question so difficult that no one need 
be ashamed of having tried in vain to solve it, and so 
important that no one should withhold an idea which 
may possibly contribute to its solution. 

In the mean time, much valuable information has 
been received from New Zealand, and it is extremely 
gratifying to observe that it has all tended to give 
authority and sanction to the principles which the 
writer has been most anxious to advocate. 

The first detailed accounts of the arrival of the 
body of colonists which set sail last autumn have been 
just made public; and while, in their general purport, 
they give happy evidence of the capacity of the 
natives, and the goodwill with which they are re- 
garded by the colonists, they contain much that indi- 
te 



ADVERTISEMENT. 



cates the necessity of powerful specific measures to 
secure their continued good treatment. 

The more I have reflected upon this subject, and 
the more information I have received respecting it, 
the more I have been confirmed in the persuasion that 
the main requisite for their support and preservation 
is that Justice should be done to them ; and that if 
savage tribes have hitherto melted away before the 
white man, it is only because the white man takes so 
little trouble to discover what is justice, when he 
stands in the threefold character of judge, jury, and 
principal party in the suit. 

In this awfully responsible situation the British 
colonists now stand with reference to the native 
inhabitants of New Zealand. I trust that they will 
be willing to receive, from whatever quarter it may 
come, any suggestion which may assist them in 
deciding how to act under such trying and difficult 
circumstances, and that they will prove by their own 
happy experience, that there is no surer way for 
promoting the best interests of a colony than to esta- 
blish strict justice in dealing with the native tribes 
with which it comes in contact. 

M. H. 

London, 
September 8, 1840. 



CONTENTS. 



Page 

Introductory Letter - - - - 3 

Address - - - - - - - - 7 

Necessity of guarding against Antipathy for the 

Natives - -- -- -,9 

The Planting of Colonies an heroic work - - 11 
Importance of strict Honour in dealing with the 

Natives * - - 12 

Importance to the Natives of the Principle of Con- 
centration ------- 14 

Importance to the New Zealanders of a due considera- 
tion for the Dignity of their Chiefs - - 17 
Influence upon the Native Interests of Government 

Regulations respecting the Acquisition of Land - 25 
A serious Evil to be provided against 27 
Any Right which the Natives may be considered to 
hold in common, or prescriptively, should be 
gently dealt with ------ 28 

Suggestions with reference to this subject - 29 
How to act with reference to Land cultivated by Na- 
tives, and small Settlements of Natives, within 
the Company's Territory 30 
General Expedients for interesting the Natives in the 

progress of the Colony "'- - - - 33 

Of the Wages that New Zealanders ought to receive 36 
An unrighteous and an equitable Mode of regulating 

Wages - -- -- -- -41 

Preservation of Native Life 50 
Causes and Remedies of Native Depopulation - • 54 
Of Laws and Civil Institutions for New Zealand - 77 



vi 



CONTENTS. 



Page 

Considerations to be kept in view in] making Laws for 

the New Zealanders - - - - 79 

Of Taboo and Utu 80 

On the Institutions of Slavery and Polygamy 85 
Of the more barbarous^Practices of New Zealand - 86 
Expedients to meet the Difficulties of the Case - 87 
Amalgamation - - - - - - -93 

Language --------99 

Religion - 102 

Postscript - -108 



APPENDIX. 

Thoughts on the Formation of a Constitution 

for New Zealand ----- 119 



TO 

G. S. EVANS, Esq., D,C.L. 

CHAIRMAN OF THE COMMITTEE OF COLONISTS. 



My Dear Sir, 

The following address has been penned with 
the single desire of doing good to New Zealand. 
Many considerations might have dissuaded me from 
writing it, but they have all yielded to the earnest 
desire that I feel to labour, even at a distance of half 
the circuit of the globe, in that most important and 
most interesting field. One dissuasive would have 
been, a feeling of delicacy towards the colonists. What 
right have I to presume that my suggestions will be 
of sufficient value to obtrude upon their notice, or that 
they will not of themselves adopt the measures best 
suited to their circumstances, and most likely to insure 
the objects which the friends of New Zealand have at 
heart I To this I reply, that the honest convictions of 
any one who has thought deeply, and without preju- 
dice, on any subject, cannot fail to be of value, and 
that even where ignorance of circumstances may dis- 
qualify from suggesting the precise measures which 
are most desirable, the suggestions will still be worthy 
of regard as illustrating the design that is had in 
view. 

The New Zealand colonists may find in the follow- 
ing pages many thoughts that have occurred to them- 
selves, many measures inferior in efficacy to those 
they will have decided on, and many which the cir- 
cumstances of the case will render impossible, but I 
trust they will find nothing which is not the index of 

JB 2 



4 



an important principle, and that, if not gaining infor- 
mation, they will at least derive pleasure from the 
perusal of these pages. 

I might also have been dissuaded from this course 
by an opposite consideration. It is possible that by 
addressing you I may incur the disapprobation of some 
whose good opinion I should be sorry to lose ; I refer 
to those who have all along set their faces against 
every project for the colonization of New Zealand. 
Believing, as I do, that this opposition has proceeded 
from an anxious concern for the fate of the New 
Zealanders, and a dread of the destructive effects 
which colonization has commonly entailed on the 
aboriginal tribes, I respect their motives, and I should 
be sorry to forfeit their good opinion. But this must 
not prevent me from adopting the course which I 
conscientiously believe to be the right one. 

I concur in the persuasion expressed by the com- 
mittee of the Church Missionary Society, that New 
Zealand is marked out by Providence to become the 
Great Britain of the southern hemisphere. But I am 
equally persuaded that no power on earth can prevent 
Europeans from being the agents by which it is to 
attain this position, or from sharing largely in the 
benefits to be derived from it ; and I therefore think 
that all who have the power should use their utmost 
efforts not to hinder but to regulate the colonization 
of that country. 

From the first moment that I became acquainted 
with the New Zealand Association of 1837, I felt per- 
suaded that such was their anxious wish. Every one 
of its members appeared to me to have a conscientious 
and heartfelt desire to check the evils which have been 
inflicted on New Zealand by the random and irregular 
species of colonization of which it has been and is now 
the theatre, and while introducing into that country 
the arts, the comforts, the knowledge, and the moral 



and social habits of a civilized race, to turn coloniza- 
tion itself into the most powerful instrument for con- 
verting and elevating the natives. And not only did 
I believe them to be sincere in entertaining these views, 
but I witnessed with pleasure the promptitude and 
liberality with which they availed themselves of every 
suggestion that might assist them to realize their bene- 
volent wishes, and the earnestness with which they 
sought to introduce every wise and beneficent influence 
into their plans. And I was therefore deeply grieved 
that these generous views did not meet w T ith a corre- 
sponding echo in the hearts of those who were best 
able to promote them, nor obtain from the wisdom of 
parliament a large and comprehensive measure for the 
systematic colonization of New Zealand. 

With the rejection of the New Zealand Bill by the 
House of Commons my acquaintance with most of the 
members of the New Zealand Association ended, and 
was only revived when I was made aware that a large 
body of my countrymen, unaided by any legislative 
measure, were about to embark for New Zealand, with 
a view to colonize the country upon the principles 
embodied in the Bill, and for which it was the object 
of the Bill to obtain the sanction of parliament. 

Upon the merits of this arduous undertaking it is 
not my business to pronounce. Suffice it to say, that 
it is a course which was clearly left open to you by 
the opponents of the New- Zealand Bill, and the only 
course by which it was in your power to give effect to 
principles which, in your opinion, were the safest for 
New Zealand. The world will adjudge to you its 
award of praise or blame, not according to the abstract 
merits of your proceeding, but according to the suc- 
cess with which it is attended. The objects which 
you propose to have in view are great and good, and 
as you have determined to attempt their execution, it 
appears to me to be the duty of every right thinking 



6 



individual to assist your efforts to the utmost of his 
power. 

I rejoice to think that the Society for the Pro- 
pagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts has acted 
on this principle in contributing to the support of your 
clergyman ; and I trust and believe that God has 
given you the person best suited for that important 
post, and I pray that under his zealous ministrations 
true religion may take deep root among you. 

Plans deduced from views of political economy, 
natural justice, and the constitution of man, may have 
their use, but if disunited from religion they must be 
faulty in themselves and must end in miserable failure, 
for religion is not a thing to be set apart, and cut off 
from fellowship with these and other laudable methods 
of doing good. Its proper province is to pervade, 
animate, and hallow them all. 

In order, therefore, that the following suggestions, 
or any plans which may occur to yourselves, may 
be rightly carried into effect, I cannot express a 
better wish for you and your brother colonists than 
that through the cordial reception of the doctrines and 
heart-moving truths of the Christian faith, a spirit of 
vital godliness may flourish in your community. For 
then you will have within your body the true spring 
of all right and generous action, and the only legiti- 
mate source of a nation's greatness. And to the un- 
tutored inhabitants of the land you will have to offer, 
not merely to be partakers in all your civil and social 
rights, but what is far better, to be " fellow heirs, and 
of the same body, and partakers of the promise of God, 
in Christ, by the Gospel." 

I have the honour to remain, 
My dear Sir, 

Your ever faithful servant and well-wisher, 

Montague Hawtrey. 



AN EARNEST ADDRESS. 



Countrymen and Fellow-Christians, 

You are at this moment on your way to 
New Zealand, a country which has long been regarded 
by most of you with feelings of the deepest interest, 
and which you are determined henceforth to consider 
as your home. You will often, no doubt, during your 
voyage, bestow a thoughtful hour upon the many 
singular features of your future position, and more 
particularly upon the peculiar and delicate relations 
in which you will be placed towards the remarkable 
and interesting people who are now its lords. It is 
on their behalf that I now address you, for deeply as 
I am interested in your whole scheme of colonization, 
my most anxious hopes respecting it are for its bene- 
ficial operation upon the aborigines. Indeed, I have 
the strongest persuasion that the success or failure of 
the enterprise, as a measure of colonization, depends 
mainly upon the course which is pursued with regard 
to the native inhabitants. No doubt there are higher 
motives to urge you to respect, befriend, and elevate 
them; every principle, which as Englishmen and 
Christians you ought to cherish — honour, justice, and 
religion — imperatively demand that you should confer 
upon them every possible benefit. But I am persuaded 
that, quite irrespectively of such considerations, your 
own interest would urge the same thing, and that as 
colonization may be made a powerful instrument for 
benefiting the natives, so the culture and protection 
of the natives may become one of the most powerful 
promoters of your success as colonists. 

Almost all the opposition the colonization of New 
Zealand has met with has been based upon its pre- 
sumed injury to the natives. Now, if from the outset 
of your proceedings, it should appear that you befriend 



8 



and benefit them, and that you do not injure them at 
all, either directly or indirectly, this cause of opposi- 
tion will be removed, and the true friends of the 
natives in England will see it to be their duty to 
forward instead of thwarting your designs ; if the con- 
trary should be the case, all their prejudices against 
you will be confirmed, they will prove themselves to 
have been true prophets, and those who have acted 
with you, in the hope that you would benefit the 
natives, will be obliged to confess their error and 
endeavour to repair it. 

Now to benefit the natives will require something 
more than good will on your parts. In proposing as 
you do to civilize and elevate them to the same social 
condition with yourselves, you have undertaken to 
solve a moral problem which has never been solved 
as yet. The publications of Mr. Saxe Banister (him- 
self a zealous friend of colonization on sound prin- 
ciples), and the Reports of the Parliamentary Com- 
mittee on Aborigines, are enough to show the frightful 
destruction of human life, and the utter violation of 
justice, honour, and humanity, which have hitherto 
attended the intercourse of civilized and savage races. 
And this not always in consequence of the evil inten- 
tions of the civilized race, but often in spite of their 
very best intentions. It is a most remarkable thing 
that the uppermost desire in the heart of Columbus 
himself was to forward the designs of a benevolent 
Creator ; the charters granted to the first colonists of 
America breathe a spirit of fervent piety, and allege 
the conversion and civilization of the heathen as the 
chief motive of the enterprise ; but what has been the 
event I Not one native remains in the whole range of 
islands discovered by Columbus, and the history of 
British colonization in America is one continued nar- 
rative of extermination. I only say this to show you 
that the work you have undertaken is no easy one, 



9 



and must be performed on principles totally different 
from any that have hitherto been brought to bear 
upon it. Some novel and admirable methods of deal- 
ing with this subject were suggested by the New 
Zealand Association, and have been adopted by the 
New Zealand Company. Others will, no doubt, 
evolve themselves, and be discovered by those who are 
alive to the subject, in the early stages of your inter- 
course with the natives. 

In the meantime I have thought it might be 
useful, and trust you will not consider it intrusive, to 
present you with some thoughts which have occurred 
to me upon the subject. 

§ Necessity of guarding against Antipathy for the 
Natives. 

The first thing I would most earnestly recommend 
is, that you should guard yourselves against a feeling 
of dislike for the natives. White men, in general, are 
accustomed to regard their coloured brethren with a 
kind of antipathy, and to speak of them and treat them 
with contempt. This feeling, unhappily, seems to be 
rather fostered than allayed by a residence in the 
neighbourhood of coloured races. The American hates 
and despises the negro, and denies the common rights 
of humanity to his own coloured offspring. The Euro- 
pean of India has feelings of the same kind towards the 
native inhabitants and half-castes. I believe this feel- 
ing to be, in a great degree, artificial — if we begin by 
injuring and degrading our swarthy brother, it is no 
wonder that we should end by despising and hating him. 
But whether wrought within us by our own evil 
actions, on the principle of odisse quern Iceseris, or 
whether it be natural to us to dislike what is different 
from ourselves, it is a most inhuman and unholy senti- 
ment; and should it get ground in New Zealand, must 
end in the downfall and extermination of the native 
race. 



10 



I rejoice to think that there is much in the charac- 
ter and condition of the New Zealanders themselves, 
to prevent this unholy feeling. All accounts agree in 
representing them as a very fine race of human beings, 
possessing many noble traits of character, highly intel- 
ligent, and most anxious for civilization. If these 
traits are drawn out and cultivated, it must be a very 
mean spirit that would regard them with contempt on 
account of their difference of colour. I derive great 
encouragement on this head from the footing on which 
Nayti was received into English society. Few could 
enjoy anything of his acquaintance without being 
deeply interested by his intelligence, his gentleness, 
his self-respect, and his perfect propriety of demeanour. 
He won the regard and consideration of all classes, and 
seemed instinctively to adopt towards all that tone of 
blended respect and self-confidence, which marks the 
character of the gentleman. If Nayti is a fair specimen 
of his New Zealand countrymen, you will be in little 
danger of entertaining those feelings of antipathy to 
which I have referred ; and if you treat them as you 
treated him, we shall have nothing to fear for the fate 
of the aborigines. 

Still you will find much in the present state of the 
New Zealanders to surprise and shock the prejudices of 
Englishmen, and for this you should be prepared; you 
will probably find them dirty, intrusive, violent, thiev- 
ish, restless, already perhaps affected by the low habits 
of the most degraded of yaur countrymen, having man- 
ners and customs of their own utterly at variance 
with all your ideas of right and wrong, and displaying 
the most extraordinary ignorance about things which 
to you are perfectly familiar. 

If you should find this to be the case, you should 
recollect that it was your own choice to go among 
them; that you have gone among them knowing 
them to be savages; and that these are the universal 



11 



characteristics of savage life. If you hope to civilize 
them, you must not expect to find them already civi- 
lized, or despise and dislike them because they have 
savage manners to get rid of. You must use the same 
patience and forbearance with them which a parent or 
wise instructor would use towards a wayward child. 

§ The Planting of Colonies an Heroic Work, 

I sometimes hear this given as a reason for expect- 
ing the aborigines to be exterminated in consequence 
of your settling among them. You settle among them, 
it is said, for w^hat purpose ? To make money ; and 
how is your making money to be promoted by civiliz- 
ing the aborigines? Now, for my part, I cannot 
believe that the sole object which takes you to New 
Zealand is to make money. It would be absurd to 
suppose that you were insensible to the value of wealth 
as a means of comfort, respectability, and power. But 
that you go there with a sordid eye to the acquirement 
of riches, and are dead to the far higher and nobler 
purposes of life, I will not believe. 

The disposition which impels mankind to seek a 
home in distant countries, is not the single wish of 
acquiring riches, but a very complicated feeling, and 
results from some of the most natural instincts and 
generous aspirations of the human heart. It is not a 
sordid desire of gain that wishes to enjoy domestic 
happiness, and be surrounded by a numerous and 
happy family. It is not base avarice which desires 
that our offspring should have room to spread and 
multiply in the earth. It is not a narrow, money- 
loving spirit that wishes to be free from those cares 
and solicitudes which in an over-peopled country press 
down the energies of generous minds. The man whose 
feelings centre in himself, and whose ruling passion is 
to acquire wealth, will never think of colonizing. 

It should never be forgotten that the planting of 



12 



colonies was called by Lord Bacon an heroic work; 
and I trust that you, the countrymen of Bacon, and 
the planters of the first British colony in New Zea- 
land, are fully penetrated with this idea, — that you 
seek wealth not as an end, but as a means; a means 
not only of promoting your own happiness and eleva- 
tion, but of carrying forward all those great designs of 
which the founders of a new state are the appointed 
instruments in the hand of God. 

§ Importance of Strict Honour in dealing with the 
Natives. 

While I am anxious to give you credit for these 
generous feelings, I would earnestly exhort you to let 
them be the actuating motives of your conduct on all 
occasions. For it is possible to entertain truly gene- 
rous sentiments, and yet to find them give way when 
brought into competition with the every-day interests 
of life. The first and most indispensable manifestation 
of this feeling will be a scrupulous adherence to truth 
and honour in all your dealings icith the natives. 
They will probably afford you a great many opportu- 
nities for taking an unfair advantage of them ; and it 
is also possible that they may afford you a kind of 
excuse for taking such unfair advantage, by themselves 
endeavouring to deceive you. Then will be the time 
to show the high principles by which you are actuated, 
and to inspire them with that respect with which 
truth and honour are everywhere regarded. Let every 
transaction that you have with them convey to their 
minds a sense of your strict justice, and become a- 
means of implanting a principle of justice in their 
minds. This will give them confidence in you, and 
cause them to distinguish you from those lawless set- 
tlers whose only object is to get all they can from 
them. And this confidence (which will continue and 
increase as long as it is not deceived) will be of the 



13 



greatest value to you, for it will dispose them to follow 
your directions in matters of which they cannot see the 
tendency, but which you may know to be conducive to 
the general good. It is by such a course as this that 
the missionaries have acquired their great influence in 
the country. "I have frequently been much delighted," 
says Mr. Wallis, a Wesleyan missionary, "with 
the passive manner in which they place themselves 
under our direction ; forbearing to exercise their own 
judgment, they cheerfully and confidently pursue any 
course of conduct to which we may direct them. This 
confidence is not founded in any good opinion enter- 
tained by them of European settlers in general; hence 
they frequently remark, that as a missionary does not 
come to get their pigs, and corn, and potatoes, and 
flax, and timber, he must be a good man, and a 
proper person to govern and direct them." This ex- 
tract shows how important it is that the natives should 
see a strong contrast between you and the common 
sort of European settlers. 

The above remarks are addressed to the colonists 
at large; but I would respectfully suggest to Her 
Majesty's Government, that it should industriously 
promote this important object, by making early and 
active inquiries into the nature of the dealings which 
are likely to take place between the natives and the colo- 
nists, and the particular instances in which the natives 
will be liable to be over-reached, and by making such 
laws as may be necessary for regulating these transac- 
tions, and by rigorously punishing any act of false 
dealing which may occur*. In order, however, to 
guard the natives against deception, you should not 
only renounce every unfair advantage which you 
might derive from their ignorance; but actively de- 
vote yourselves to the removal of that ignorance, and 
to their gradual instruction in all the valuable know- 
* See page 36, the remarks upon the subject of Wages. 



14 



ledge of civilized life. I am deeply affected when I 
think of the incalculable good which might be done 
among the native New Zealanders by one thousand 
of my countrymen, were they all temperately to 
resolve to avail themselves of every opportunity for con- 
veying instruction to their minds: the opportunities 
will be constantly occurring, and nothing will be 
required to make them profitable, but a feeling of 
active benevolence and religious responsibility on the 
part of the British colonists. If they have the fear of 
God before their eyes, and the love of man in their 
hearts, every day and every hour may afford them the 
most happy opportunities for doing the work of their 
Redeemer. Long before you are enabled to commu- 
nicate with the natives by w r ords, you may be giving 
them the most valuable instruction by your actions. 
A kind and courteous demeanour towards all ; a sym- 
pathy for those who are in trouble, and a desire to 
relieve them; diligence in business; command of tem- 
per when interrupted; readiness to explain any process 
which may excite their curiosity; a conscientious ad- 
herence to truth, both in looks, words, and actions ; 
and a firm stand against every species of intemperance 
and immorality, are qualities which may be exercised 
by you all from the moment of your landing, which 
scarcely require the intervention of language, and 
which cannot fail to be powerfully influential upon 
the wild but noble natures among which you will find 
yourselves. 

§ Importance to the Natives of the Principle of 
Concentration. 

There is another objection which is frequently 
urged against your whole scheme of colonization. The 
conduct of the lawless settlers is cited against you ; 
and it is contended that those of the labouring class 
among you will fall into the same habits; that, once 



15 



landed in New Zealand, there will be nothing to pre- 
vent them from roving over the whole country; that 
there will be no law to govern, and no power to coerce 
or punish; that whatever authority there is, maybe 
easily escaped; and that human nature being prone to 
evil, and having the power to do evil, will run rapidly 
into every species of mischief and licentiousness. I 
trust that where such objections are made, they proceed 
from an entire ignorance of the plans and principles 
upon which you are proceeding; but they may serve 
to indicate the direction in which your measures are 
liable to fail, and put you studiously on your guard 
against such an occurrence; and for this purpose it 
should be the effort of all to make it the interest of 
each to live together in a compact and well-ordered 
community. That this will be the result of your plan 
I have the strongest expectations. It is the object of 
the land regulations of the New Zealand Company 
to ensure it ; and it is still more effectually pro- 
moted by the circumstance of your going out in 
families and married couples, and not as single indivi- 
duals. Still, much must be left to your own wisdom 
and good feeling when you get there; and I trust it 
will be the ambition of every one of you to make your 
settlement the most perfect model of what a colony 
ought to be. 

You are all embarked together in a great experi- 
ment. You are going to give a trial to the principle 
of concentration. It is the advantage of concentration, 
that it gives labour to the capitalist and wages to the 
labourer, and affords protection, and society, and active 
employment, and a ready interchange of the necessa- 
ries and conveniences of life to all. In fact it creates 
at once, in the new country, the advantages and enjoy- 
ments of an old one, while it affords an abundant 
supply of these enjoyments and advantages to all. 
Still it is not every one that can foresee these conse- 



16 



quences, and appreciate their value. It is therefore 
doubly incumbent on all who do, to take the utmost 
pains to give the principle its full effect by patience, 
by mutual good offices, by friendly intercourse among 
one another, and by winning the confidence and affec- 
tion of the labouring classes. These objects will be 
greatly promoted by the institutions already founded 
among you — the Hospital, the Literary and Scientific 
Institution, and the Infant School. You will proba- 
bly add to this list a Mutual Benefit Society, and Sav- 
ings' Bank, and such other benevolent institutions as 
are found conducive to the general interests of the 
community. 

The simple fact that you take out with you a 
clergyman of the Church of England, and another of 
the Church of Scotland, for the two great religious 
bodies of which your colony consists, would appear 
almost sufficient to silence the objections of those 
who foretell the future dispersion and vagrancy of the 
colonists. I trust that these two great and sacred 
institutions, while teaching you those doctrines, and 
filling you with those affections which shall fit you for 
an eternal inheritance hereafter, may bind you toge- 
ther in a close and friendly brotherhood on earth. 

In fact, everything ought to be done to distinguish 
you from the lawless settlers, and to give you the 
character of a people; and, for this purpose, I would 
recommend that from the outset of your proceedings, 
a full and complete register should be kept of every 
individual member of your community. A complete 
system of registration, from the earliest times, is one of 
the most valuable and least expensive boons which the 
first founders of a nation can confer upon posterity, 
and it would be one powerful means for keeping you 
together, and giving you the character of a people. 

I ought perhaps to apologize for introducing so 
much that bears rather upon your relations with one 



17 



another, than upon your intercourse with the natives. 
But you will readily perceive my reason for doing so. 
It is because nothing will give you so much power to 
benefit them, as to be firmly united among yourselves, 
and fully bent upon the great design of founding a 
compact, well-ordered community. 

§ Importance to the New Zealanders of a due consi- 
deration for the Dignity of their Chiefs. 

The matter at which I look with the deepest anxiety 
is your treatment of the native chiefs. Upon this 
point your success or failure, as regards the aborigines, 
appears to me to depend. Not only justice to them- 
selves, but a respect for the national importance of the 
New Zealand people, requires that the chiefs should 
continue to occupy as high a relative position after 
your settlement among them as before. 

I fear that this important point has not been 
sufficiently attended to by the missionaries, and that 
the course of things at present going forward in New 
Zealand, is to depress the chiefs to the level of the 
lower orders. It is very evident that this is felt to be 
the case, by the chiefs themselves. Many of you have 
seen the Letter addressed by a New-Zealand chief to 
Mr. Marsden. After mentioning several matters 
respecting which he requests Mr. M. to give them a 
law, he concludes his letter by the remarkable words, — 
" Another thing of which we are afraid, and which 
also degrades us is this, slaves exalting themselves 
above their masters : will you give us a law in this?" 
This expression from a Christian chief is very 
affecting; and it is clear that unless something be 
done for the purpose of obviating such a result, the 
natural consequence of the progress of civilization 
would be to degrade them from the position which 
they occupied in their savage state. 

There is a tendency to this even when the civi- 

c 



18 



lizing process is carried on by missionaries alone. It 
is with the deepest pain that I read such a passage as 
the following, in the journal of a Wesleyan mission- 
ary. It refers to a conversation with a chief named 
Kia Roa, upon the subject of their funeral rites. 44 I 
asked if they cried for the slaves in this manner: 
'What/ said Kia Roa, 'the slaves taken in war?" 
c Yes, 1 I replied. 4 No, no/ said he, 4 where, or near 
where, a slave dies, he is buried; we don't take them 
to the Wahi-tapu (or sacred place).' 4 Why V said I. 
'Because/ said Kia Roa's friend, 4 New Zealand man 
would be angry.' This specimen of pride in these 
degraded creatures ( who appear to us to be all on a 
level ) above their fellow worms, affected my heart? I 
am far from disputing the piety or benevolence of the 
person who expressed this sentiment ; but I think the 
result of his ministrations would be to bring about 
that state of things of which the Christian chiefs are 
afraid, and by which they feel themselves degraded. 

One of the points most perseveringly urged against 
the colonization of New Zealand, has been its interfe- 
rence with the independent sovereignty of the country. 
Now, the present possessors of this sovereignty are 
the native chiefs, for there is no king, nor is there 
any representative of the whole New Zealand people. 
The only way, then, in which we can respect, and the 
way in which justice imperatively demands that we 
should respect, the sovereignty of the New Zealand 
people, is to confer upon their chiefs such benefits as 
shall be fully tantamount to whatever rude authority 
they possess in their savage state, and which must 
necessarily pass away from them, as civilization ad- 
vances, whether this civilization is effected by a 
British Colony, or by missionaries. Power or influ- 
ence of some other kind must be given to them 
instead of that which they lose. This is no more than 
justice to them, in respect to the rights which they must 



19 



lose, and it is the only way in which their presumed pre- 
rogative of sovereignty can, under present circumstances, 
be made available for the welfare of the New Zealand 
people. 

For it must be plain to any one, that the best Way 
to make the New Zealanders truly respectable and 
dignified in their own feelings, and in the view of 
others, is to let them have some persons among them 
occupying a position of wealth and distinction. Even 
if there were no chiefs in New Zealand, it would be 
far more judicious to select certain persons from 
among them, and place them in a position of honour, 
than to distribute what would be requisite for this 
purpose over the whole people. 

A gratuity to each individual could only be a 
small temporary source of gratification, would tend to 
encourage idleness, and would leave the whole body 
of the people in the same uniform low condition as 
before. To raise some among them to a position of 
permanent respectability would have a great many high 
moral results. It would make all the people feel that 
as a race they were not dishonoured ; and would excite 
among all a laudable emulation to raise themselves by 
industry, activity, or skill, to a position which they 
saw already occupied by persons of their own blood. 

But as this would be obviously judicious, quite 
irrespectively of the rights of the chiefs, how impera- 
tively is it not demanded, when there is a class of 
people in the island who by common consent and 
prescriptive right hold a position of eminence above 
the others, and connect with this position of eminence 
the acutest sense of the distinction which it confers. 

The importance of the views here expressed seems 
fully to have been appreciated by the New Zealand 
Association, as appears in the Appendix to their work 
on the British Colonization of New Zealand; and bv 
the framers of the New Zealand Bill, who provided 

c 2 



20 



by its twenty-ninth clause, that, whenever a native 
chief should cede his territory to the British, a quan- 
tity of land proportionate in extent to the number of 
the inhabitants of the ceded territory, should be 
reserved and held on trust for him and his family and 
descendants, in order that they might preserve, in 
civilized life, a relative superiority of condition over 
the lower orders of inhabitants of the native race. 

The Directors of the New Zealand Company have 
also recognised the same principle in reserving one 
tenth of the purchased land for the use of the natives. 
It must be obvious to every one that, if your 
colony succeeds, as there is every reason to expect, 
these reserves will form an ample fund for the national 
wealth of the New Zealand people in general, and the 
chiefs in particular. It is impossible, at this moment, 
to foresee in what way these reserves ought to be dealt 
with. This must be determined by the progress of 
events; any arbitrary determination beforehand, on so 
extremely delicate a subject, must be productive of 
evil ; all that can be done now, is to look upon them 
as sacredly set apart for the benefit of the New 
Zealand people, to increase their value by the wisest 
management, and to prepare the natives for their pos- 
session by the most judicious treatment. 

The first question to determine will be the persons 
who are to benefit by the reserves in any given case. 
And to this the answer is plain : the chiefs from 
whom the land has been purchased, by whose consent 
and authority it has become amenable to the institu- 
tions of the colony. The inquiries, therefore, which 
the agents of the New Zealand Company will be 
obliged to make, in order to give the Company a 
valid title to the possession of their lands, will have 
the indirect benefit of ascertaining, with the greatest 
precision, who the persons are, on whom an elevating 
influence should principally be brought to bear. 



21 



This suggests the absolute importance of keeping, 
from the very first, an accurate register of the native 
chiefs from whom the land shall have been purchased. 
But this will not be enough. The civilizing and 
elevating process cannot be expected to have any great 
effect upon these individuals themselves; we must 
look into futurity if we wish to see the full effect of 
the working of our principle. It will therefore be 
necessary not only to register the chiefs themselves, 
but also to make out exact tables of the descendants 
and family connexions of each of them, in the man- 
ner in which the genealogies of the principal families 
of England were registered by the heralds who visited 
the counties for that purpose in the sixteenth and 
seventeenth centuries*. 

From the conduct which the New Zealand colo- 
nists and their friends adopted towards Nayti, when 
in England, I feel sure that you will be anxious, as 
soon as possible, to admit the native chiefs to your 
tables, and teach them how to associate with English 
families without being intrusive. It will also be use- 
ful and convenient to yourselves to follow the example 
of the missionaries, in receiving the children of the 
native chiefs into your families, for the double purpose 
of assisting you, and learning by observation the habits 

e It appears to me that it would be a matter of convenience, and 
would confer a valuable distinction with little trouble, if a particular 
heraldic symbol were allotted to each of these families ; and we have 
a precedent for the usage in the solemn gift of a flag to the chiefs of 
the Bay of Islands, as indicative of the sovereignty of the New Zea- 
land people. If this course was thought wise in respect of an ideal 
sovereignty, which, from the constitution of society in New Zealand, 
had no person or body of men to vest in, how much more necessary it 
becomes in order to identify, distinguish, and honour those persons 
to whom alone anything like sovereignty actually belongs ? It would 
save trouble, be simpler, and more in character with an early people, 
if these devices were, like those of our most ancient families, of the 
simplest kind, such as bars, bends, chevrons, &c, on fields of uniform 
colour. The native instruments, birds, and flowers of New Zealand, 
might also be introduced into them ; but everything of a fanciful, 
unmeaning character should be carefully excluded. 



22 

of civilized life. But you will, of course, be very care- 
ful that not the slightest feeling of servitude is con- 
nected with such a position, and that they have time 
and opportunity for the general cultivation of all their 
faculties. And recollect that you will be dealing with 
a most delicate material, and one of the nature of 
which you have never yet had any experience, and the 
management of which — it would be folly not to expect 
— will occasion you much trouble and annoyance. 
Anything like coercion or correction would, probably, 
in the present state of things, have the most disastrous 
results. Mr. Turner, a W esleyan missionary, wrote 
frpm Wangaroa, in 1824 : " This morning, having 
occasion to complain to Tebooa, of his son Shunghee's 
conduct, that he might control him, he replied, That 
if a New Zealander beat his child, the child would 
hang himself through vexation, and his father's friends, 
in return, would put the parent to death ; so that 
correction, on any account, is forbidden*." 

* Having made the above quotation, I cannot refuse myself the 
pleasure of inserting the following extract from the Wesleyan mis- 
sionary notices for September, 1839. It is from a letter of the Rev. 
Nathaniel Turner, dated November 21st, 1838. 

u It was a baptismal time. We on this occasion admitted into 
the church, by the administration of this sacred rite, one hundred 
and sixty-eight adults and forty-six children. Several of these were 
persons of the first rank, and some of them had for years, until of 
late, stood out against warning, entreaty, and every means that Chris- 
tian zeal could employ to bring them to Christ. What gave greater 
interest to myself and Mr. Hobson on this occasion, was, the circum- 
stance that several of these were amongst those to whom we first 
preached the gospel at Wangaroa, but apparently without any effect. 
The seed of life, however, then sown has not been lost. It came 
out on our inquiries with them prior to baptism, that the impressions 
then made had never been erased. One of them was Honghi, the 
eldest son of Te Puhi, our principal chief when at Wangaroa. His 
wife also was baptized, who was also in our family all the time we 
were there. They have several interesting children, who we hope 
now will be trained up in the service of the Lord." 

Those who are acquainted with the alteration which has taken 
place in New Zealand orthography will not fail to recognise in the 
Honghi and Te Puhi of 1838, the Shunghee and Tebooa of 1824. 



23 



It is obvious that they must be won by kindness, 
by patience, by exciting their interest, — that their 
habits should be observed, their feelings appreciated, — 
that they should be allowed much liberty, — that they 
should be led to consider their association with the 
British families a privilege and not a restraint, — and 
that anything likely to injure their health, or aggra- 
vate or depress their spirits, should be carefully 
avoided. 

An early consequence of your settlement in New 
Zealand will, I trust, be not only the establishment 
of an Infant school, but of other schools for those more 
advanced in age. The great amount of good which 
is done in England by means of voluntary instruction 
in Sunday and Day schools, will, I trust, act as an 
inducement to the New Zealand colonists to cooperate 
in similar labours of charity for the benefit of the 
young New Zealanders. An incalculable amount of 
instruction might be conveyed to them by six persons 
agreeing to devote three hours a week each to the 
work of their instruction, and would be a most desir- 
able w r ay of instructing them until funds are raised 
for the support of a schoolmaster. Great use may 
also be made of their hours of freedom, by promoting 
among them a taste for manly English habits. 

These remarks apply to the young New Zealanders 
in general. But I think something more ought to be 
done in favour of the young chiefs : those whom it 
will be expedient to form into the props and buttresses 
of the national honour of New Zealand. It will be 
highly desirable to select the most promising, well- 
disposed, and intelligent among them, and send them 
to be educated in England. What funds and facili- 
lities there may be for effecting such an object future 
events must disclose. But it appears to me that 
nothing would so infallibly secure the future prosperity 
of the New Zealand race, as for their young chiefs to 



24 



obtain a thoroughly good English education, bypassing 
several years of their youth, between the ages of ten 
and twenty, partly in good English families, and 
partly at our public schools. Nayti is an example of 
the good which might be effected by such a course; 
but much more would be done for them if they were 
to come over earlier and to stay longer *. And by 
the time of their return to their native country, their 
portion of the reserved land would have acquired such 
a value as to support them comfortably in that kind 
of life to which they would have been accustomed, and 
enable them to associate on a footing of perfect equality 
with the British settlers. Were this plan adopted it 
is highly probable that, in the course of ten or fifteen 
years, we might have a number of young native New 
Zealanders, not only perfectly acquainted with the 
manners, habits, and language of Great Britain, but 
thoroughly well instructed in all those branches of 
study which are essential to a liberal education — able 
to take correct views of men and things, and justly to 
appreciate and carry out those measures which had 
conferred such great benefits on themselves and their 
country. 

I will say no more on this subject at present, as 
the possibility of effecting it depends so much upon 
future contingencies. I merely suggest it as an im- 
portant object to be had in view, according as pos- 
sibilities arise, while the colony advances in prosperity 
and the native reserves increase in value. Might we 
not reasonably expect that many of those wealthy and 
powerful individuals in this country, whose interest 
is at this moment so strongly excited in favour of the 
native New Zealanders, would be happy to promote 
an object so obviously conducive to their national 
prosperity ? 

* The reserved lands, if fairly farmed, would be a fund available 
for these purposes. 



25 



§ Influence upon the Native Interests of Government 
Regulations respecting the Acquisition of Land. 

As I have just alluded to the native reserves, I 
would take this opportunity of expressing the pleasure 
with which I observe that her Majesty has announced 
her refusal to acknowledge as valid any title to land 
in the islands of New Zealand, which either have been 
or shall hereafter be acquired from the natives, which 
is not either derived from or confirmed by a grant to 
be made in her Majesty's name and on her behalf*. 
Nothing gives me better hopes for the rectification of 
past evils and the prevention of future ones than the 
existence of this right in the crown of England, and 
her Majesty's determination to exercise it. 

44 Adventurers," it was said, in 1836, 44 go to New 
Zealand from New South Wales and Van Dieman's 
Land, and make a treaty with a native chief — a treaty 
in duplicate — the poor chief not understanding a 
single word about it ; but they make a contract upon 
parchment with a great seal, and for a few trinkets 
and a little gunpowder they obtain land*f-." For 
more than three years since this statement was made 
things have gone on in the same way, and the prin- 
ciple of non-interference with the sovereign rights of 
the New Zealanders would have suffered it to proceed 
till not only 44 the whole coast line from Cape Bult to 
Wangaroa " and 44 all the Kouri forests," but the 
whole length and breadth of New Zealand, without 
an exception, had become 44 the private property of 
her Majesty's subjects j." 

It is a most happy thing that her Majesty can 
interpose and give her subjects somewhat juster notions 

* Despatch addressed by Colonial Secretary to Captain Hobson. 
f Mr. Wakefield's evidence before Parliamentary Committee on 
Waste Lands. 

$ Petition to his late Majesty from British Settlers in New 
Zealand. 



26 



about the acquisition of property in New Zealand ; a 
most saving and hopeful provision of our laws, that no 
one can possess himself of land in a country claimed 
by Great Britain (which, happily for its inhabitants, 
New Zealand is), except as granted to him by the 
crown ; that it does not follow that the dexterous 
adventurer who first tempts the native-chief with his 
bundle of blankets and firelocks, is to be the future 
lord of districts measured in square miles, and covered 
with timber valued almost in millions. It only now 
depends upon the just and wise exercise of the power 
which England undoubtedly possesses, guided by the 
experience of past days, and enlightened by the foresight 
of coming events, to rescue the natives of New Zealand, 
who have already parted (or seemed to part) with 
their lands, from the consequences of their own igno- 
rance ; and to make such regulations for the future 
as shall amply provide for the preservation, wealth, 
and honour of the New Zealand people, under that 
influx of European settlers which it is now impossible 
to prevent. 

I trust it. may be found that the New Zealand 
Company will not be among the number of those 
whose purchase the Crown of England will refuse 
to confirm, on the ground of their not having given a 
sufficiently valuable consideration to its native pro- 
prietors. But I still more earnestly hope that the 
power which her Majesty has determined to exercise 
will be the means of securing to the New Zealand 
people, all over their islands, as large a portion of the 
lands which have been ceded by them to Europeans, 
as will be reserved for them within the territory of the 
New Zealand Company; and that measures will be 
taken as favourable as those adopted by the New 
Zealand Company for securing to these reserves in an 
equal degree with the land held by British settlers, 
that improved value to which the British settler looks 



27 



as his pecuniary remuneration for settling in the 
country. 

If this be done it will be securing to them an ad- 
vantage far more valuable than that half-conceded, 
half-disputed right which they are said to reserve to 
themselves, of entering upon the lands they have 
parted w4th at some future period; -while the possible 
existence of such a right makes it absolutely impera- 
tive upon Great Britain, when about to take a step 
which will fix the state of property in New Zealand, 
to see that in depriving them of this right of re-entry 
she confers upon them some fudy equivalent advantage. 

§ A Serious Evil to be provided against. 

The common ignorant argument that we hear 
urged against you in England, is, that you are gone to 
take possession of a part of New Zealand by force of 
arms. Your powder, your cannons, your militia, are 
all cited as positive proofs that you go with the inten- 
tion of wholesale destruction and forcible occupation. 
I have already said that I believe you go with the 
intention of paying the New Zealanders such a price 
for their lands as shall not only amply satisfy them, 
but amply satisfy any commission of inquiry which 
may be appointed to examine into the titles of lands 
held by Europeans in New Zealand. At the same 
time there are one or two difficulties connected with 
the occupation of native territory, to which you should 
give your most serious consideration. 

What will you do in the case of plots of ground 
under native cultivation, and in case of native dwel- 
lings which may be found within the territory pur- 
chased by the Company ? 

What I want to guard against in suggesting this 
question is, that dreadful consequence of a purchase of 
native territory by Europeans, from the imputation of 
which, even the Church Missionaries have not escaped. 



28 



I earnestly hope and trust that the imputation in their 
case may be an utterly groundless one. But I pray 
that it may stand out as a warning beacon before you, 
and that it may be your constant study to prevent it 
as the most fearful shipwreck of all your plans of 
benevolence, the destruction of New Zealand, and the 
fulfilment of the worst forebodings of your opponents. 
The consequence 1 refer to is, that the natives residing 
on your territory, cultivating little spots of ground 
within it, and freely making use of it for passing to 
and fro in all directions — interfering with you, and 
finding themselves interfered with by you, and being 
unwilling to submit to the regulations you may esta- 
blish — will assemble themselves together, go off in a 
body, and fall upon and massacre some distant tribe, 
in order to take possession of their land, and be at a 
distance from British interference. 

Against this disastrous consequence, it will be your 
business most carefully to provide, and the way to do 
so will be to make your settlement exceedingly attrac- 
tive to the natives. 

§ To this end, any Right which the Natives may be con- 
sidered to hold in common, orprescriptively, should 
be gently dealt with. 

It would be extremely desirable that you should 
acquire a territory sufficiently large for your purposes, 
on which no natives are actually residing, and to draw 
them into it, instead of driving them from it. But it 
is most likely that this will not be the case, and that 
land will be cultivated within it, and natives residing 
upon it, and in the constant habit of passing over it 
and using its unoccupied parts according to their 
pleasure. 

From all that I have heard upon the subject, I 
should judge that the natives have a common prescrip- 
tive right to the cultivation of the soil, and perhaps 



29 



other prescriptive rights quite independent of the 
right of the chiefs, as lords paramount, to dispose of 
the soil, and that it is, in fact, some kind of sove- 
reignty, and not the soil, that the chief disposes of 
when he sells land to Europeans. I should infer from 
Nayti's evidence, that even the Cookees, or slaves, have 
a right to cultivate the soil for their own use, though 
they have no right to its possession*. And Captain 
Fitzroy states, that in the case of the purchases made 
by the Church Missionary Society, the natives have 
been allowed to remain upon them, and that their right 
of common has not been interfered witlrf". In all these 
respects, your course will be a difficult one, and require 
your utmost wisdom, patience, and Christian charity, 
to guide you through it. 

§ Suggestions with reference to this Subject. 

Speaking in general, I would earnestly hope that 
you will studiously abstain from everything vexatious; 
that your whole treatment of this question will be such 
as to inspire the natives with a feeling of liberty and 
privilege under a sense of an immense power to control 
them ; that while they are overawed and restrained, 
not by force or interference, but by their own sense of 
your great superiority, they may be attracted by your 
beneficence, and by the interest with which they shall 
behold the great fabric of civilization rising up in the 
midst of them. But to come to particulars, I mean 
the particular expedients to be made use of in respect 
of natives residing, cultivating land, and passing to 
and fro within your territory. 

I would advise you — 

1st. To ascertain what prescriptive rights of this 
kind may be considered to exist among the natives. 

2nd. To ascertain who the persons are that enjoy 
these rights within the territories of the Company. 

* Report of Lords' Committee, p. 115. -j- Ibid. p. 173. 



30 



3rd. As far as may be consistent with your objects, 
to preserve these rights to the persons enjoying them. 

4th. As far as may be consistent with the welfare 
of the natives, to regulate, define, and modify them to 
suit the circumstances of civilized life. 

5th. To confer an ample equivalent wherever it is 
necessary to remove them altogether. 

I feel sure you will appreciate the importance of 
ascertaining specifically who the persons are whose 
interests will be affected in the way referred to. Con- 
sidering the scantiness of the population of New 
Zealand, compared with its extent, it is not probable 
that there will be any great number of native residents 
upon the Company's territory ; but all that are, it will 
be important to ascertain and know, both in order to 
secure them against injury, and to secure yourselves 
against unfounded reproach, in case evils should be 
perpetrated in New Zealand not originating with you, 
but which others (if you have not the means of refut- 
ing them) will be too happy to allege against you. 

The usage of our country would indicate that rights 
of way should be respected ; there can hardly be a 
question about it, where the path is distinct and 
defined, but where there is a right of going at large in 
a certain direction, it would I trust be attended with 
no ill consequences to prescribe a certain path- way; 
the principle of taboo so perfectly understood by the 
natives would make this easy. At the same time it 
would not be well to be vexatiously and needlessly 
particular. 

§ Query, hotv to act with reference to Land cultivated 
by Natives, and Small Settlements of Natives 
within the Company s Territory. 

Where land is under actual and profitable cultiva- 
tion by a native, it would be a great hardship to oblige 
him to remove from it without any other equivalent 



31 



than the general price paid for the whole territory to 
his chief or tribe, and the prospective advantage 
which may accrue to him from the native reserves. 
And yet what else is to be done when the section in 
which it lies has been selected by its British pur- 
chaser? We are tempted to wish that the New 
Zealand Company had determined to purchase no 
land under native cultivation. The land to be 
reserved for the natives is quite another thing: the 
advantage to the .New Zealanders of the native re- 
serves is the national importance they will derive from 
their improved value in future years; and this object 
would be defeated if they were to be made over to 
such individuals as may happen to be cultivating spots 
of ground within the territory purchased by the Com- 
pany. It must also be confessed that, until the natives 
acquire a greater knowledge of agriculture, it would 
not be desirable that much of the land should be under 
exclusively native cultivation ; while it would be a 
great hardship, and a cruel impolitic act, to check any 
little effort of native industry, by obliging them to 
leave any spot of ground which they held in cultiva- 
tion. 

This appears to me to be the only thing incident 
to the principle of concentration, which is at all likely 
to be oppressive to the natives. Those who go to 
spread themselves over the country at large, may keep 
quite clear of the parts under native cultivation; but 
the principle of concentration requires that the whole 
of one district should be brought, as speedily as pos- 
sible, into the highest degree of cultivation. And 
thus, though the principle of dispersion must be, in 
the long run, most injurious to the natives in general, 
while the principle of concentration, with large re- 
serves within the improved land, is certain to provide 
a great fund for their support, the principle of con- 
centration may press most heavily upon individual 



32 



natives, who are cultivating land in their own way 
within the district to be improved. 

The course which I should suggest with reference 
to this subject would be, — 

1st. To take an exact account of the land within 
the township under native cultivation. 

2nd. To spare such land as long as possible; 
cceteris paribus, let it be the last interfered with. 

3rd. Where such land would be of great impor- 
tance to the colonists, let a handsome remuneration, 
and if possible a permanent benefit, be conferred 
instead of it. 

4th. Where any natives are allowed to continue 
cultivating land for their own use within the Com- 
pany's territory, let them understand that, as before 
they cultivated by the sufferance of their chief or tribe, 
according to New Zealand custom, so now they culti- 
vate by the sufferance of the person who has purchased 
the section, and as his tenants; and let them be led to 
pay a small rent for it, either in kind or labour : if 
on the native reserves, they would be tenants to the 
trustees of the native reserves. And in the present 
state of things, although, it would wholly defeat the 
plan for elevating the natives, to grant them portions 
of the reserves in respect of the land previously held by 
them in cultivation, it might be very convenient to 
allow them to cultivate them as tenants under the 
trustees, taking care, however, that such an arrange- 
ment should not detract from their improvement in 
value. 

5th. Let the natives perceive that it is more 
advantageous to them to labour for hire under the 
British settlers, than to cultivate the land on their own 
account*. 

The above remarks apply to the case of spots of 
* See page 36 — Observations on Wages. 



33 



ground cultivated here and there within the Company's 
land, and upon sections subject to selection by indivi- 
dual proprietors. I suppose I am right in conjecturing 
that, in the case of a small settlement of natives within 
the circuit of the territory purchased by the Company, 
the Company's agent and officers would have taken 
care to exclude such settlement from the Company's 
purchase, or, at least, not to include it within the sec- 
tions of land subject to selection by the landowners 
under the Company. This I should judge, not only 
from the hardship that would be inflicted, and the 
dangerous results that might ensue, and the bad repute 
it would occasion to the colonists if they were removed, 
but also from the value of their labour to the settlers. 

For the same reason, it would be important to deal 
gently with any spot of ground which they may be in 
the habit of using for their public assemblies. 

§ General Expedients for interesting the Natives in the 
progress of the Colony. 

But the great object will be to treat them so well, 
to inspire them with such a persuasion of your good 
will, — so to convince them that your prosperity will 
insure theirs, that they shall freely give up whatever 
would thwart the progress of the colony, and unite 
heartily with you in all your objects. 

I will mention a few things by which the interest 
of the natives might be excited, and the public good 
promoted. 

1. Public Structures. — I should think it would be 
easy to interest them in the erection of public build- 
ings. More so, perhaps, than in making comfortable 
dwellings for themselves, it would, I think, suit their 
taste to be engaged in the production of large works, 
which would strike the imagination, and be perma- 
nent. 

D 



34 



2. Religious Assemblies. — Their imaginations would 
also be much struck by your religious assemblies; and 
they would be inspired with a feeling of veneration 
for the great object of your worship, long before they 
could appreciate the truth of your religion. This 
feeling of interest and veneration it will be highly 
expedient to cultivate, by always allowing them to 
be present at your religious services, and by attending 
them with great regularity, and conducting them with 
great decorum yourselves. Let everything connected 
with the worship of God be conducted on a large and 
commanding scale. The cheerful notes of the church- 
bell, the solemn tones of the organ, and the united 
chorus of praise offered up by a whole Christian con- 
gregation in a large and handsome edifice — while they 
would recall to you all the home-felt recollections of 
your native land — could not fail to have a most bene- 
ficial and civilizing effect upon the minds of the 
natives. And although religion does not consist in 
these outward and adventitious circumstances, we may 
go too far in our neglect of them. 

3. Military Discipline. — The drilling and exercise 
of your militia may also be expected to have a good 
effect upon their minds. Both for your own sake and 
for theirs, it is expedient that they should be strongly 
convinced of your superior power; but let them also 
feel that it is a power intended as much for their pro- 
tection as for your own. They will probably be very 
willing to imitate your military exercises. And it 
would be extremely desirable that every native of suffi- 
cient age should be enrolled in your militia, and have 
the same military uniform, and be drilled and exer- 
cised together with them. Such a course will give to 
them, and to their friends in England, the strongest 
assurance that you have no intention to injure them. 
And if you continue to treat them well, you will never 
be the w T orse for the additional military skill they will 



35 



thus acquire, while the coolness and discipline of our 
military tactics, as compared with the savage excite- 
ment of their war-dances, will tend rather to allay 
than to excite in them a thirst for bloodshed. 

4. Manly Games. — Another instrument of civili- 
zation and good fellowship, will be the introduction 
among them of the manly games of England, and, 
indeed, of any manly exercises requiring skill and 
bodily discipline, and carried on with temperance and 
decorum. One of the earliest and brightest ornaments 
of the Church of England* did not disdain to describe 
in one of his sermons the fine moral effect produced 
upon the companions of his younger years by their 
practice of archery, and the demoralizing and enervat- 
ing character of the sports that supervened when the 
old English long-bow was set aside. If such manly 
practices are adopted with design, and as constituent 
parts of one great plan for the formation of a people, 
and carried on with judgment and on principle, they 
will be almost as certain to effect good, as idle, vicious, 
and inhuman sports, accompanied by gambling and 
intemperance, and carried on with passion and for 
self-gratification, would be certainly pestilential and 
destructive. The New Zealand colonists have en- 
gaged in a great and most difficult enterprise, and the 
eyes of multitudes are fixed upon them. I earnestly 
hope that they may one and all be animated by such a 
sense of duty, such a masculine energy of mind, such 
a steady contemplation of futurity, as will give them a 
thorough disgust for the cock-pit, the gambling-house, 
the prize-ring, and every other idle and vitiating pur- 
suit of the felonry of New South Wales. 



* Latimer, bishop and martyr. 



36 



§ Of the Wages that New Zealanders ought to receive. 

I have already said that one way to recompense 
the natives whom you deprive of their prescriptive 
right to cultivate the soil in common, will be to make 
it more advantageous to them to labour for hire under the 
British settlers, than to cultivate the land on their own 
account. This leads me to make some observations on 
the wages that New Zealanders ought to receive for 
their work. 

The New Zealander in his native state has as little 
notion of the value of labour as he has of the value of 
land, and very little idea of measuring the value of 
money by what it will produce. If a certain weekly 
payment in money is offered to him for his labour, the 
last thing that he will do is to sit down and calculate 
whether, upon the whole, he might not obtain all the 
substantial advantages which that money would pro- 
duce to him by remaining his own master. His 
imagination will most probably be excited by the idea 
of possessing British money, and without at all know- 
ing its value, he will suppose that he is going to 
become a rich man*. 

The pernicious consequences which result to the 
natives from this ignorance as to the value of money 
and labour, are observable in the working of the tim- 
ber-trade. This will best appear by comparing toge- 
ther an extract from a letter published in the first 

* The very inadequate notions which the natives entertain upon 
these subjects may be inferred from a singular answer of Mr. John 
Flatt, to a question put to him by the Lords' Committee:— Question: 
Supposing a purchaser to take possession, and cultivate the Jand, do 
you consider that the native feeis that he is giving up all title to that 
land? Answer: He is looking forward to become a gentleman: he 
first receives payment, and then he is employed upon the land ; con- 
sequently he is richer, he considers, than he ever would be without 
that. They get a payment for the land, and another for working 
upon it, they say. 



37 



number of the New Zealand Gazette, with some 
evidence that was given before the Lords 1 committee. 

Extract from Letter, 

New Zealand, Dec. 15th, 1838. 

Sir, — I have taken the opportunity of sending this letter 
by the Coromandel, loading with timber here, but expect it 
will be March before she sails. There is no place in the world 
scarce with such timber for masts of ships and other things as 
here. Our master, by the Coromandel, will clear 7000£. or 
8000£. The whole value, I am told, is 24,000£. or 25,000^, 
and they have it cut up for almost nothing : but they begin 
to get more awake. They will saw no more for their 4s, 

a-weeJc A person came from England with us, 

by the name of Josh. England, and is living with missionaries 
at Wymath; gets 12s, a-week; provisions for self, wife, three 
children; good house, free; water, wood, brought by the natives 
to his door; only as servant out-doors to job about stores. 

C. Shaw. 

For the remainder of the letter, I refer you to the 
first number of the New Zealand Gazette, It is well 
worth reading, and carries internal evidence of its 
truth. It is not at this moment before me, but it 
states that the above-mentioned work was done by 
three or four pair of natives, superintended by a 
European. I will observe by-and-by upon the injus- 
tice of this distribution of Wages, as between employer 
and labourer, and as between Englishmen and New 
Zealanders. But I shall now request you to observe 
some of its natural results. 

Extract from the Evidence of Messrs, Coates and Beecham, 
before the Committee of the House of Lords, 

{To Mr, Coates.} Have you heard whether any diseases 
have been introduced of late years, in consequence of the 
natives having taken very much to the habit of felling timber 
for exportation % 

No ; I am not aware of the existence of any disease intro- 
duced by that employment. 



38 



It is stated by one of the witnesses, that the natives have 
left off cultivating their grounds, and gone into the woods, and 
that that has introduced glandular affections ? 

I have never heard that. 

{To Mr. Beecham.) Have you ever heard of that? 

I am not sure that I should speak correctly, were I to say 
that any particular form of disease had been introduced in 
consequence, although they may have aggravated the diseases 
to which they were previously subject. The case has been 
thus represented in some of our communications : — It is stated, 
that the attention of the natives has been drawn from the 
cultivation of their lands by the timber-trade; and that, in 
consequence, they have suffered much through the want of 
food. 

It is said, they have worked so hard in felling timber, and 
bringing it down to the water, and their food has been so 
scanty and so very mean, that their health has suffered in 
consequence ; and that thus, through the want of proper food, 
and over exertion, they were injuring their constitutions, and 
wearing themselves out. — Report, p. 183. 

Extract from the Evidence of Mr. John Downing Tawell*. 

Is there anything further you wish to state to the Com- 
mittee? 

There are one or two topics on which I should wish to 
offer a few observations; one is relative to the timber-trade 
which is carried on. Previous to this trade being carried on 
to any considerable extent, the attention of the natives had 
been directed to a considerable degree to the cultivation of the 
soil, the rearing of pigs, and those sort of things. Since this 
has occurred, that has been in a great measure neglected ; and 
that trade with the colony in New South Wales has almost 
entirely ceased; and in several instances the natives of the 
northern part of the northern island have had to be supplied 
from Cook's Straits and that neighbourhood with actual suste- 
nance, such as Indian corn, and potatoes, and so forth. 

How do you account for that? 

They are all of them exceedingly addicted to the use of 
tobacco ; and it has been a custom and settled habit with those 
who have dealt with them for timber, as much as possible to 
involve them in debt. The Christian part, and others too, 

* The witness above referred to : a surgeon and eye-witness of 
the facts. 



39 



have been exceedingly honourable: they have always been 
kept in the back-ground, and the arrangements with them 
have been so mystified, they have generally suffered exceed- 
ingly from that. The exhausting nature of the trade itself, 
involving an immense exertion of animal power, with the 
depressed diet, consisting, instead of a quantity of animal food, 
that is, pork, almost entirely of potatoes, has introduced a 
disease which, till this trade occurred, was completely unknown 
— a general glandular affection. 

Do you conceive that that arises from the forests being 
damp, or do you attribute it to the diet ? 

I attribute it to the extremely depressed diet, in connexion 
with the increased labour. This affection has now become 
almost universal: I saw some hundreds of persons affected 
with it, both amongst the Heathen and the Christians. 



Observe that this evidence was given before a com- 
mittee of the House of Lords, in May, 1838; and 
that, in December of the same year, the New Zea- 
landers were still working at this laborious and 
exhausting employment for 4s. a-week, while an Eng- 
lishman, for one of the lightest of all occupations, 
received an ample supply of every necessary for him- 
self and family, and 12s. a-week*. 

Many indignant feelings are aroused by these 
statements, but they concentrate themselves into one 
intense and fearful conviction, that, If you deal with 

* It is worthy of remark, that the Bishop of Australia was in 
New Zealand at the very same time (December, 1838, and January, 
1839); and that, in a letter giving an account of his visit, he states, 
with reference to the melancholy but too manifest diminution of the 
native race about the Bay of Islands : — a So deeply was I impressed 
with the persuasion that deficiency of proper nourishment formed one 
very sensible cause of their falling victims to this insidious disorder," 
(an epidemic which raged while he was there,) "that I solicited Cap- 
tain Harding to leave with the missionaries such stores of flour, 
sugar, and rice, as could be spared from his ship, engaging to re-place 
the same on our return to Port Jackson ; and I left a small supply of 
money for the purchase of similar articles, and of animal food, for 
the use of the sick and the convalescent." — Church Missionary 
Record, Dec, 1839, p. 293. Further reference will be made to this 
letter hereafter. 



40 



the New Zealanders ox their own terms, you are 
certain to exterminate them : if you deal with them 
on their own terms, you will have their lands and 
their lives for nothing. 

It is of no use, it never would have been of any 
use, to say, " Leave them alone." Nothing but a 
united determination on the part of all the naval powers 
in the world, to make it an act of piracy to land on 
New Zealand, could have given us any hope that they 
would be left alone. But since we cannot leave them 
alone, and since you have undertaken to go among 
them, you may be sure of this, that if you proceed 
upon the 

" Good old rule, the simple plan, 

That they should take who have the power, 

And they should keep who can," 

the doom of the New Zealanders is sealed. And it is 
not by arguing for their abstract rights, or denounc- 
ing New Zealand colonization, but by examining 
every minute phenomenon of their social state, and 
their actual relations with Europeans, and by the 
determined and conscientious use of every possible 
effort to regulate these matters upon the principles of 
highest justice and clearest philosophical discrimina- 
tion, that their doom can be averted. Nor can I help 
expressing my fear, that the Church missionaries are 
not as much alive as they ought to be to the temporal 
and bodily interests of their people, — interests which 
should be fostered with the most jealous care, and 
which take a new and complex character, and are 
assailed, in a great variety of imperceptible ways, the 
moment that civilized man sets foot upon their shores, 
and are above all most vitally affected by their changed 
position as to the results of their manual labour. Nor 
must I withhold my opinion, sensible as I am of the 
misrepresentation which I risk in expressing it, that 
Christianity itself — in so far as it tames the indignant, 



41 



wilful spirit of the New Zealander, and teaches him 
to be meek and submissive, to distrust himself, and to 
resign temporal advantages — has itself a tendency to 
let him sink and disappear, unless we make the most 
resolute, wise, and highminded contemporaneous efforts 
to sustain and elevate him. 

§ An unrighteous and an equitable Mode of regulating 
Wages. 

There are two modes of regulating wages, the one 
unrighteous and the other equitable. 

The former regards the labourer not as a person, 
but as a thing, and only inquires how it may get the 
most work done at the least expense; and it willingly 
avails itself of every advantage it possesses over the 
ignorance or other unfavourable circumstance of the 
agent it employs. Now, in point of fact, this is the 
common mode of regulating wages in this and other 
highly-civilized countries; we do not stop to inquire 
the rights of the case, or to regulate wages on prin- 
ciples of equity; we let every man see to his own 
interest, and we depend upon the principle of demand 
and supply for their adjustment. And in countries 
like this, where every one has so keen an eye to his 
own interest, where each child from its infancy knows 
the relative value of labour and money, instances of 
the unequitable and oppressive character of this mode 
of regulating wages are not often brought before us; 
and we let ourselves insensibly adopt the notion that 
every one has a natural right to get his work done as 
cheaply as he can; and if any one chooses to labour at 
a disadvantage to himself, he only reaps contempt, 
together with injustice. But give a man the power 
to labour, and deprive him utterly of the knowledge 
and judgment which would teach him to make his 
labour most available for his own advantage, and the 
iniquity of such a course w T ill at once appear. 



42 



The equitable mode of regulating wages proceeds 
upon two considerations; one regards the advantage 
reaped by the employer, and the other regards the 
abilities expended by the labourer. 

The wages obtained by the labourer ought to bear 
a certain proportion to the advantage reaped by the 
employer. What the exact proportion should be, I 
am not prepared to say; but we may say, with safety, 
the proportion which usually obtains between them in 
prosperous and happy countries, where all classes thrive 
together. I am not aware whether this proportion 
has been ascertained in any particular cases; it would 
be curious and useful to ascertain what it generally is. 
in different countries, and for different kinds of em- 
ployment, and how it varies. But we have no diffi- 
culty in pronouncing that, upon any estimate which 
can be made, there must be a gross violation of equity 
where a person clears in a few months 7000/. or 8000/. 
by the labour of eight or nine persons working for 4s. 
a- week : and where there is so enormous a dispropor- 
tion in the rate of wages that a sawyer, expending the 
best strength of his body, receives but 4s. a-week, 
while an out-door servant, employed merely to "job 
about stores," receives 12 s. a-week, provisions for self, 
wife, and three children, good house free, and water 
and wood brought by the natives to his door. 

I have been informed that, in England, sawing is 
generally done by task, and a pair of sawyers in full 
work can earn from three to four pounds per week. 
The prices per hundred feet are, for oak and ash, 4s. ; 
elm, 3s. 6d. ; and fir, 3s. But if at day labour, they 
are paid a guinea each per week, making no difference 
between the top sawyer and the pitman. In the 
Portsmouth dock -yard, top-sawyers of the first class 
are paid 24s. per week; those of the second class, 21s. 
In both classes the pitmen are paid alike, and receive 
21s. 



43 



The wages which would be obtained in England 
by an out-door servant, employed to " job about stores," 
would depend upon the amount of labour required, the 
judgment necessary, and the confidence reposed. Per- 
haps 15s. per week might be stated as the average. 

In order to carry out the comparison between 
wages in England and wages in New Zealand, we 
ought to know — 

1st. Whether the New Zealand sawyers were or 
were not victualled by their employer, and if they 
were, what was the cost of their victualling; and, 

2ndly. What would be the cost in New Zealand 
of provisions for an Englishman, his wife, and his 
three children, a good house, and the carriage of wood 
and water for the family. 

It would be very desirable to ascertain these parti- 
culars exactly; and they ought to be ascertained by 
any commission of inquiry having for its object to 
secure justice to the aborigines while undergoing the 
severe and dangerous passage from savage to civilized 
life. But, considering that the food of the New Zea- 
land labourers employed in the timber-trade is 44 scanty 
and very mean, consisting chiefly of potatoes;" and, 
considering the abundance in which potatoes are pro- 
duced in New Zealand, we may safely say that the 
victualling of each New Zealand sawyer (if they were 
victualled by their employer) would not exceed 3s. 
per week. On the other hand, considering the abun- 
dant and comfortable maintenance which appears to 
have been enjoyed by the out-door servant, and the 
scarcity in New Zealand of those supplies which would 
be essential to the comfortable maintenance of an Eng- 
lish family — a scarcity which is in some measure 
indicated by the facts that the Bishop of Australia, on 
his departure from New Zealand, had to request Cap- 
tain Harding to leave what could be spared from the 
stores of the ship for the relief of the sick natives, and 



44 



that the support of the New Zealand mission last year 
cost the Church Missionary Society nearly 17,000^ — 
we may infer that the maintenance of the out-door 
servant and his family could not have cost his em- 
ployers less than 30s. per week. Thus, in all proba- 
bility, the remuneration of the New Zealand sawyer 
would be to the remuneration of the English out-door 
servant in a ratio not greater than that of 7 to 42, or 
1 to 6; while the wages of a sawyer to those of an 
out-door servant in England would probably be in a 
ratio of 24 to 15, or 8 to 5. So that — taking into 
consideration the nature of the two employments, and 
taking the practice of England as a fair criterion of 
the relative amount of remuneration that should be 
assigned to each — the pay of the Englishman in New 
Zealand was to the pay of the native as 48 to 5, or 
nearly ten times as great ! 

The only unexceptionable arrangement in such a 
case — the arrangement which would at once do justice 
to the New Zealander, and excite his ambition, while 
it secured his employer against the chance of defective 
work — would be to ascertain the price per 100 feet, 
which would be paid in New Zealand to English 
sawyers, and to pay the same price to the natives, 
letting them do their work by task. 

There is another point to be considered; it may be 
offered in explanation of the fact, that such large 
profits may be cleared by the New Zealand timber- 
trade, but it supplies an additional reason for giving 
good wages to the native labourer. It is this — I state 
it in the words of Mr. Baring, in his evidence before 
the Committee of the House of Lords : — " The timber 
is not purchased ; they do not purchase the right to 

cut timber The wood is taken out of the 

forest ; the natives attach no value to it ; no purchase- 
money is paid for it." The fact is, that the timber of 
New Zealand is one of those possessions which the 



45 



natives hold in common; and since no price is paid for 
it to any one else, equity demands that its prime cost 
should (in respect of their common right to its posses- 
sion) be paid to those New Zealanders who have 
expended their labour upon it. And if it were 
cut by Englishmen, and not New Zealanders, a cer- 
tain price or duty ought still to be paid, and go to the 
formation of a fund for the national wealth of the New 
Zealand people. 

" But the natives attach no value to it, and can 
derive none from it." Very true; and they attach 
scarcely any to their land, and this is a very strong 
reason why they ought to be allowed to part with 
both on equitable terms, but no reason why we should 
enrich ourselves by what belongs to them, without 
returning them an equivalent. 

It may be irksome to go into such particulars; but 
we may be certain that it is the neglect of these nice 
points of equity, which has always occasioned the 
destruction of the native races ; these nice points 
which we so easily overlook, when they are over- 
looked by the persons themselves with whom we are 
dealing, and which there are so many specious reasons 
to make us overlook. It may be said, for instance, 
that " the New Zealander's wants are not so many as 
the Englishman's, and that therefore he ought not to 
be paid so much. 11 But we forget that it is his savage 
state which causes his w^ants to be fewer; and that, 
through our agency, he is undergoing the perilous 
transition from savage to civilized life, and that we are 
exhausting the last efforts of his savage strength; and 
can we suppose that if justice is not attended to — if 
equity is not administered — if we do not grant him 
the full measure of advantage which we should have to 
grant if we were dealing with civilized men — he will 
be able to support himself through the perilous change, 
and to acquire the same relative position as a civi- 
lized man which he enjoyed as a savage? 



46 



The other consideration, upon which an equitable 
appointment of wages may be made, regards the abili- 
ties expended by the labourer. If the person we em- 
ploy, in order to serve us, must forego certain positive 
advantages, justice requires that these advantages 
should be amply made up to him. 

If a man, by the natural exercise of his powers in 
the position in which he finds himself placed, could 
supply himself with all that is necessary to health and 
comfort, it would be highly criminal to throw an illu- 
sion over his mind which should make him give up 
these natural advantages, and expend his strength in 
our service for an utterly worthless consideration. 
But such, precisely, is the witchcraft which the civi- 
lized man has it in his power to employ upon the 
savage. He makes him give up his freedom, and his 
health, and elasticity of mind, and his common right 
to the cultivation of the soil, and all the supplies he 
could obtain from sea and land by working for himself, 
and throws over him an opiate spell by which he is led 
to employ " immense efforts of animal strength" in his 
service, and gives him in return — four shillings 
a- week ! But how far will this go to supply him 
with comforts and appliances equivalent to those which 
he enjoyed in his state of wild freedom, and to make 
provision for the supply of those other and far more 
numerous wants, which it is the tendency of civiliza- 
tion to create ? 

I am glad that the above facts have enabled me to 
urge a point which has been very much overlooked in 
dealing w T ith the question of justice to the aborigines. 
Very great stress has been laid upon the injustice of 
depriving them of their lands and their sovereignty, 
the advantages of which (with the exception of the 
common right of cultivation) are remote and ideal; 
and yet, under the eye of the missionaries, the grossest 
injustice is practised in dealing with the only thing 
which may be said properly to belong to them, namely, 



47 



their bodily strength and their personal freedom ; be- 
sides depriving them as effectually of their common 
interest in the soil, as if it was taken away from them 
by purchase. I am glad, too, that in urging this 
point, I am addressing those who have not yet touched 
the shores of New Zealand, and who go there, I doubt 
not, with the sincere desire of doing good to the 
natives, and redeeming the character of British colo- 
nization from the opprobrious imputations which have 
been cast upon it. 

I am sensible that some of the above remarks would 
almost appear to come from an opponent of coloniza- 
tion. They certainly do come from an opponent of 
colonization conducted on the loose and disordered 
principles on which it has hitherto proceeded. But 
they come from one who is perfectly convinced that 
colonization will proceed, whatever may be done to 
thwart it, and who is equally convinced that it only 
requires the bold and conscientious exercise of wisdom, 
justice, and Christian charity, and liberality, to make 
it a messenger of peace and prosperity to the native 
inhabitants ; for the resources of the country are 
amply and superabundantly sufficient, both for the 
wealth of the colonists and the equitable remuneration 
of the aborignes. If full justice is administered, and 
the relative advantages and obligations of the different 
parties are minutely attended to, the application of 
industry to so promising a field cannot fail to secure 
the prosperity and happiness of all ; where mean self- 
ishness and villainy are the actuating impulses, they 
will issue in a worthless and ill-omened prosperity to 
the despoilers, and the utter destruction of the native 
race. 

The above thoughts lead me to surest, — 
1st. That the principal members, or rather, the 
whole of the first New Zealand colony, should form 
themselves into a society for the protection of the 
aborigines. 



48 



2nd. That they should regulate, on strictly equit- 
able principles, the wages to be received by the New 
Zealanders. 

3rd. That when the same amount of work is done 
by a New Zealander and by an Englishman, the New 
Zealander should receive as much as the Englishman. 

4th. That where the works done by the New 
Zealander and the Englishman are different in kind 
or quantity, the New Zealander should be fully remu- 
nerated for his labour; and that the common rights 
which he resigns by living in the British settlement, 
and working for Englishmen, should be made up to 
him. 

5th. That where the wages so to be received by 
the New Zealander are more than he requires for 
his present maintenance, they should be placed to his 
account in the hands of responsible, trustees, until 
advancing civilization and his own improved capacity 
point out some desirable mode of employing it. 



The foregoing pages were already in print when 
I met with a remarkable confirmation of the inference 
drawn in page 44, as to the enormous disproportion 
that exists between the pay of the Englishman and 
the pay of the native in New Zealand*. It occurs in 
an extract of a letter from Mr. T. W., dated Hoki- 
anga, 12th August, 1839, and appears in the New 
Zealand Journal, for March 21, 1840. Mr. T. W. 
writes as follows : — 

Two vessels came in chartered to me last week, to fill with 
timber, from Launceston, to supply the new colonies, Port 
Adelaide and Port Philip. Just now there is hut little sawn 
timber, and I have put a great number of natives to fell and 

* Viz., that the pay of the Englishman, in New Zealand, is to 
the pay of the native as forty-eight to five, or nearly ten times as 
great. 



49 



square the timber. I have also been for several months much 
engaged in building saw-pits, and persuading the natives to 
learn the use of the saw ; many are masters of it, and I shall 
spare no pains nor expense to endeavour to get them to stick 
to work. 

I find good pay and mild treatment the best master ; as for 
employing white men, necessity at present compels me, but 
native work does not cost me above a tithe of the white mail's. . . 

The insight which this affords into the price paid 
for native labour, is the more remarkable from being 
accompanied by expressions which indicate that, in 
the opinion of the writer, his treatment of the natives 
was humane and liberal. It appears to him, — and he 
no doubt expresses the opinion that was universally 
entertained by his countrymen in New Zealand, — that 
a New Zealander receives good pay when he receives 
one-tenth of what would be paid to an Englishman 
for the same amount of work. But upon what prin- 
ciple of justice or equity, upon what principle but the 
law of superior might, can this be held I 

If to the first colonists of a new country labour is 
extremely valuable, it should be paid for in propor- 
tion, whether the work be done by natives or Euro- 
peans ; that it is extremely valuable appears from 
another passage in the same letter : — 

From my knowledge of the trade and the river, and with 
the natives' and my own exertions, I am satisfied, that in the 
course of twelve months, I could double any capital I could 
command, to the extent of 5001. or 1,000£ 

In striking contrast with the "four shillings a- 
week," of the New Zealand sawyer, is the price which 
has been received by Englishmen, for similar w T ork, in 
another rising colony. The following passage occurs 
in a recent work on South Australia : — 

That tall man yonder, with the long pit-saw across his 
shoulders, glittering in the sun, and his mate with him, are 
both from New South Wales, and were even convicts, or the 
descendants of convicts in that colony. They are now earning 
good wages as sawyers in the Mount Lofty range ; and the pair 

E 



50 



of them, last Sunday morning, received eighteen sovereigns for 
their previous week's work in the bush. Nine pounds a- week 
each for a working man ! — James, p. 4. 

If we may draw any inference from this passage 
as to the intrinsic value of labour in a new colony, and 
if the British colonists deal fairly with the aborigines 
of New Zealand, there will be no want of funds for 
the support and elevation of the native race *. 

§ Preservation of Native Life. 

The most distressing circumstance connected with 
civilization is, that it involves something which tends 
to the destruction of native life. The true cause of 
this remarkable phenomenon remains undiscovered; 
but under its operation, the aborigines are said to dis- 
appear like snow melting beneath the sunbeams. It 
has been observed by writers of all characters and 
opinions, some of whom appear to have no better hope 
for the coloured tribes than that its action should be 
retarded as much as possible by shielding them from 
intercourse with the whites, while others think it 
ought to be acquiesced in, as a mysterious but inevi- 
table appointment of Providence. 

It is, moreover, a painful and surprising fact, that 
the population has been observed to disappear, even 
under circumstances which we should be disposed to 
consider the most favourable to the coloured race, 
where no act of oppression is inflicted, — where they 
continue in the undisturbed enjoyment of their politi- 
cal and territorial rights, and where large sums of 
money are expended on their improvement. 

This is proved by what has taken place in the 
South Sea Islands, islands which still retain their 
national independence, which have been the scene of 
the most successful labours of the London Missionary 
Society, but of which the native population has de- 
creased with frightful rapidity. 

* See Postscript, page 108. 



51 



It appears for some time to have been believed, 
that these distressing results were not occurring on 
the scene of the Church Missionary Society's opera- 
tions in New Zealand. This is implied in the follow- 
ing passage of Mr. Coates's address to Lord Glenelg, 
respecting the New Zealand Association : — ■ 

Only let New Zealand he spared from colonization, and the 
mission have its free and unrestricted course for one half 
century more, and the great political and moral problem will 
he solved. Of a people passing from a barbarous to a civilized 
state, through the agency of Europeans, with the complete 
preservation of the aboriginal race, and of their national inde- 
pendence and sovereignty. 

The fact of the decrease in the population of New 
Zealand was afterwards pressed upon the notice of the 
Missionary Societies and the public in general. But it 
was contended, in reply, that the evils complained of 
in New Zealand " were greatly exaggerated, that it 
was doubtful whether the population had decreased to 
the extent that had been represented, — that the chief 
cause of the decrease of population was not intercourse 
with Europeans, but scarcity of food and domestic 
wars, and that the labours of missionaries had a direct 
tendency to diminish the operation of these causes." 
It was also urged in explanation of the alleged decrease 
in the number of the natives, that "an epidemic had 
raged at the Bay of Islands, and proved fatal to many 
of them * ; and that the transition state from barba- 
rism to civilization is not favourable to the health cf 
aboriginal people." 

These statements, however, were but little quali- 
fied to remove the misgivings of those friends of the 
aborigines who continually heard of the rapid decrease 
of the population of New Zealand, and of the sad fore- 

* This must have been at least eighteen months previous to the 
visit of the Bishop of Australia, who also mentions an epidemic as 
raging when he was there. 



52 



bodings entertained by the natives themselves, that 
they were disappearing from the earth, and that the 
white man's God was destroying them in order to give 
their land to a more favoured race. 

But whatever doubts may have been entertained 
as to these facts, they have been for ever set at rest by 
the painful testimony to their truth, which I shall 
now lay before you in some further extracts from the 
letter of the Bishop of Australia : — 

The great problem at present, I think, is, how they may be 
preserved, to form a Christian nation ; for such, if they be pre- 
served, they assuredly should become. But, in mournful sin- 
cerity of heart, I express my own opinion, that their numbers 
have diminished in a fearful ratio since our first connexion 
with them ; and that unless preventive measures can be sug- 
gested, the race is wearing out, and will, at no very remote 
period, altogether disappear. The missionaries refer to instances 
throughout the country, where the numbers of natives are less 
by one-third, or even one-half, than they were on the first 
establishment of Europeans being formed. It presented itself to 
me as a most remarkable circumstance, that wherever we went, 
the children were very few ; very few, indeed, compared with 
the number of adults ; and compared also with the proportion 
of children among the missionaries themselves, who have gene- 
rally large families. To what causes this disparity could be 
attributed, I was diligent in endeavouring to ascertain ; but 
came away without receiving satisfaction. The effect of wars 
is spoken of, as accounting for the diminution of the popula- 
tion. But any one, who reflects for a moment, must be sensi- 
ble that the wars of the present generation are mere bloodless 
skirmishes, compared with the combats of their forefathers. 

It seems, indeed, very clear, that the population was 

greatest when wars were most sanguinary; and is declining 
most rapidly where wars are nearly extinct. The practice of 
infanticide I hope, and believe, does not prevail among any 
who are Christians by profession; but in their native state, 
there can be no doubt that it does prevail Cannibal- 
ism, among those who associate much with Europeans, and 
especially among those under instruction by the missionaries, 
may be considered as extinct. I believe that the people whom 
I chiefly saw had no more disposition to devour one another, 
or any one else, than the same number of our own countrymen 



53 



would have felt. How, therefore, to account for the percepti- 
ble and unceasing diminution of their numbers, I am utterly 

at a loss My opinion is, in a few words, that the 

general state of health among the natives is not satisfactory ; 
that there is some cause, not very obvious, by which their con- 
stitutions are undermined ; that the investigation of that cause 
has not been pursued with due energy, or attention to system ; 
and that the wants of the natives, in point of clothing, warmth, 
and comfort, especially during the winter season, deserve and 
demand the attention of the Church Missionary Society, and 
of its charitable supporters, who can feel for the situation of 
these their destitute brethren. 

My object in giving you this extract, is to let the 
truth be known on a most important subject, and to 
show the necessity of making more diligent inquiries 
into the cause of this evil, and taking more effectual 
measures than have ever yet been taken to prevent it. 
For if it be true that "the transition state, from savage 
to civilized life, is not favourable to the health of 
aboriginal people," it becomes the first duty of those 
who are introducing this change among them, to 
examine into the causes which render it unfavourable 
to their health, and to endeavour to remove them. 

Before giving an opinion upon the possible cause 
and remedy of this waste of native life, I should 
recommend you, at the outset, to take such measures 
as w r ill enable you, at any future period, to pronounce 
w r ith certainty as to the effect which your residence 
among them may produce upon their numbers, and 
to this end, I should advise you, — 

1st. To make a periodical census of the numbers 
resident w 7 ithin the territory which you occupy. 

2nd. To keep an exact account of their births, 
deaths, and migrations, whether into or out of your 
settlement. 

I have already said, — and the same opinion is 
expressed by more competent judges, — that it is 
highly probable there may be some cause, or combi- 
nation of causes for this evil, beyond those which are 



54 



obvious, or easily discoverable. While, therefore, I 
am most anxious to make you acquainted with every 
thought which has occurred to my own mind upon 
the subject, I am quite sensible that any suggestions 
I can offer with respect to it must be exceedingly 
defective. Their aim, indeed, is rather to suggest 
courses of inquiry, than to propose specific expedients. 

§ Causes and Remedies of Native Depopulation. 

The deleterious influences which are brought to 
act upon the New Zealanders, in the first steps of 
their progress to civilization, have appeared to me to 
arrange themselves under the following heads : — 

I. The sudden, incomplete, and intemperate adop- 
tion of new habits. 

II. The want of good food and substantial 
comforts. 

III. The contraction of diseases, and the degrada- 
tion of native women. 

IV. The prejudicial effect produced upon their 
minds by the peculiarities of their new position. 

I. The sudden, incomplete, and intemperate adop- 
tion of new habits. 

The action of this cause may be illustrated by 
something that occurred during the Peninsular war. 
While the soldiers were living under tents in the 
country they enjoyed uninterrupted health, but as 
soon as they came into their winter quarters, they died 
in great numbers. Upon this, it was ordered that 
they should be brought into town by parties, at first 
for a night or two, and then for longer periods, and be 
sent back into the country in the interim. By this 
means the change in their mode of living was gradu- 
ally effected, and their lives were preserved. 

The precise expedient which was adopted to save 
the lives of the soldiers is obviously inapplicable to 
the case of the New Zealanders ; but the whole cir- 



55 



cumstance may serve to show how natural it is that 
mortality should occur, when a number of people 
suddenly change their mode of living, and wh^n 
proper precautions are not taken to render such change 
innocuous. 

During the completely savage state of New Zea- 
land, its natives, notwithstanding their barbarous 
practices, were hardy and simple ; their food was sup- 
plied abundantly, and offered no temptation to excess : 
their drink was water from the brook or the river, and 
that they drank seldom, and in small quantities. They 
had no laborious employment ; they were at liberty 
to take rest or exercise as inclination prompted, and 
their habits were such as to harden their frames against 
all the contingencies of savage life. 

The approach of civilized man introduces a new 
element into their existence. For the first time they 
become acquainted with luxuries in the shape of 
warmer clothing, a greater variety of food, drinks of 
various kinds, and tobacco under various forms. By 
these the constitutions are assailed in many ways. 
(1.) They are rendered less hardy, less able to with- 
stand the common vicissitudes of savage life. (2.) 
They are exposed to an additional vicissitude, in sud- 
denly losing the enjoyment of the imported luxury, 
and being unable to replace it. (3.) They are liable, 
through ignorance of their effects, to indulge in these 
luxuries in a manner highly prejudicial to their health, 
and this consequence probably follows, not only from 
the use of things manifestly injurious, as spirituous 
liquors, but of things commonly thought innocent, 
as tobacco, and of things in themselves beneficial, but 
rendered injurious by an injudicious use, as warm 
coverings. There is much reason to fear that the 
blanket, so largely introduced among them, and so 
valuable to Europeans as an article of barter, has been 
productive of injury in causing violent perspirations, 



56 



of which they suddenly relieve themselves by expo- 
sure to the cold, and thus bring on all kinds of pul- 
monary disorders. (4.) They become liable to injury 
from the use of certain luxuries and comforts coming 
within their reach, while they are unable to obtain 
other luxuries and comforts which are made necessary 
by the use of the former ones, in order to qualify and 
balance the effects which the former have upon the 
constitution*. (5.) They are induced, for the sake of 
these luxuries, to undergo great and unwonted bodily 
fatigue, without having the stamina or animal suste- 
nance which are necessary in order to bear up against 
it. (6.) They are ignorant of the remedies to be 
applied to the disorders which are introduced by any 
of the means above described. 

It is easier to point out these evils than to show 
how they may be obviated ; it is clear, however, that 
there are three courses to adopt with regard to them, 
namely, (1) to prevent, (2) to habituate, and (3) to 
counteract. 

1. To prevent. — Let the natives be taught that 
there is a danger in adopting European habits in a 
random irregular way : that it is injurious to be]warmly 
clad in a European dress, or perhaps wrapped up in a 
number of blankets one day, and to go nearly unco- 
vered the next. If they are not in a state to live 
altogether as Europeans, let them not give up their 
mats, the clothing which appears to be most suited to 
the other circumstances of savage life ; let them be 
taught that the proper use of the blanket is to protect 
them from the cold at night, not to oppress them 
with unnatural heat during the day, and to tempt 
them to seek relief by exposing themselves to sudden 

* Beware of sudden change in any great point of diet, and, if 
necessity enforce it, fit the rest to it ; for it is a secret both in nature 
and state, that it is safer to change many things than one. — Lord 
Bacon On the Preservation of the Health, 



57 

extremes of cold. Let similar expedients be adopted 
with regard to all other European luxuries ; let them 
not make violent and irregular efforts ; let them not 
starve one day, and eat to repletion the next ; let 
spirits, as an article of barter, be conscientiously re- 
nounced, and let not the convenience of dealing with 
them, by means of blankets and tobacco, overbalance 
the evil thereby inflicted on the natives, should it 
appear, on impartial examination, that they tend to 
enervate and undermine their constitutions. Let us 
endeavour to discover articles of barter which they 
would value as much, which would be more conducive 
to their health, and more suitable to their present 
state and their opening prospects*. 

2. To habituate. — But as it would be impossible, 
and contrary to our intention to prevent them altoge- 
ther from the adoption of European habits, let them 
be adopted as far as possible in a gradual and orderly 
manner. The highland kilt has, I believe, been 
introduced into South Africa as a good step towards a 
more civilized vesture ; and the highland plaid and kilt 

* For instance, one reason why the New Zealand sawyer perishes 
where the English sawyer thrives, and why the English timber- 
master gets his work done by natives for a tithe of what he is obliged 
to pay to Englishmen, may probably be that the English workman 
has his own pit-saw, while the New Zealand workman has no saw, 
but that which his employer finds him; while therefore the English- 
man can labour as he likes, the New Zealander is deprived of the 
power of labouring, except on his master's terms, and at his will. 
If, instead of paying his victim in rum, tobacco, or blankets, he 
would offer him a good pit-saw in return for an equivalent amount 
of labour, he might not himself extract so much gold out of his 
sinews, but he would be doing an act of justice to the aborigines, 
which would tend to the sustenance and preservation of the native 
race, in placing them on a footing of equal advantage with the British 
settlers, and giving them a sense of independence and property in 
their own labour to which they must now be strangers ; while it 
would also tend to the benefit of future British colonists, by hus- 
banding the supply of native labour, instead of rapidly exhausting it 
for the sake of extreme profits at the outset. 



58 



has been suggested as a suitable and picturesque cos- 
tume for the New Zealanders. Perhaps a loose shirt 
and duck trousers might be advantageously adopted as 
the first general addition to their dress, while they 
continue to retain the mat for their upper covering ; 
after these have come generally into use, other articles 
of dress can be added, as taste or expediency may 
dictate. The same course might be adopted with 
regard to all the other European luxuries which it is 
thought proper that they should learn to enjoy. 

3. To counteract. — When the above expedients are 
insufficient to protect the natives against a premature 
and intemperate use of European luxuries, everything 
should be done to counteract the bad effects that are 
found to result from them. If the natives are led 
through your means to indulge in anything which 
tends to exhaust and enfeeble, you should administer 
whatever is necessary to restore and invigorate, and 
any particular form of disease which is introduced by 
their change of habit should be studied in its origin 
and progress, and active measures taken for its 
removal. But no distinct opinion can be formed 
upon this branch of the subject, except by personal 
observation on the spot. 

In all that precedes I have supposed the natives 
to be guided by their own natural impulses in the 
irregular use of European luxuries. But they may be 
subject to another destructive agency in the encourage- 
ment to intemperate and pernicious habits which is 
offered to them by Europeans. I need not say that 
where conduct of this kind comes to light, it should 
be promptly and decisively coerced by the public sense 
of the community. 

II. The want of good food and substantial com- 
forts. 

Although their constitutions may be injured by 
an indiscreet and irregular indulgence in what may 



59 



be called European luxuries, I am strongly inclined 
to believe that a more active cause of the failure of 
native life is an insufficient supply of such necessaries 
and substantial comforts as their altered circumstances 
require, — a plentiful supply of good food is an indis- 
pensable requisite to good health. There is some- 
thing in a low wretched way of living which renders 
the constitution an easy prey to some disorders. 
Witness the wide ravages of the cholera and the 
typhus fever among the poorer classes in our own 
country. And one kind of food may be quite suffi- 
cient to preserve health, when the mind is perfectly 
free from care, when the body enjoys perfect ease and 
liberty, and the man is surrounded on all sides by the 
salubrious influences of a primitive mode of life, while 
a very different description may become necessary 
when the body is engaged in hard labour, the mind 
is occupied in new efforts and contemplations, and the 
constitution is assailed by the noxious effects which 
the approach of foreigners has been so frequently 
observed to inflict upon aborigines. 

The following extract will show how important it 
is that the colonizing race should use forethought as 
to the means to be adopted to secure to the natives a 
continual supply of good food and clothing at an easy 
rate. It is from a communication of Mr.* J. Mat- 
thews, a catechist of the Church Missionary Society, 
to the Parent Committee, dated March 4, 1839. He 
writes : — 

The natives — painful thought! — are still on the decrease. 
Means are used, and are blessed with success ; but means are 
inadequate to grapple with the alarming march of scrofula. 
The rapid increase of this disease almost exceeds the belief of 

those who are not eye-witnesses Twenty years ago, 

perhaps not one in a hundred was to be seen with scrofulous 
swellings. At the least, in this day, five hundred out of a 
thousand have marks of scrofula ; and this both in old and 
young. We suppose that this difference has arisen from their 



60 



change of diet. Leaving the fern-root in seasons of scarcity, 
and hailing the maize as a blessing, they universally planted it ; 
but finding it hard, and having no mill to grind it, they foolishly 
adopted the plan of putting it into water till it rotted, and then 

ate it in that state They generally dam up a place, 

where they deposit the corn for the winter: it lies here for 
months, until the place is really abominable, on account of the 
stench. A great demand for food both by missionaries and other 
Europeans, has been another cause, as they generally sell nearly 
all but seed. A demand has been also made on their time for 
labour, which of course has left them less time to cultivate*. Now, 
in their native state, they could manage without our articles of 
clothing, as is evident ; for before their intercourse with Euro- 
peans they were far more numerous, and less subject to diseases 
of all kinds. — Another great cause of consumption is their 
improper use of blankets. If they have two, they generally 
wear them by night and day : when very hot, they throw them 
off, take cold, and die. We are called upon to witness many 
painful things. The natives, as a body, are so fond of European 
apparel, that they have become very indolent in making native 
garments. Many thoughts possess the mind on visiting them 
in their villages — seeing the greater part of them, old and 
young, half-naked — such as, What can be done for this people ? 
Here we are surrounded by thousands of human beings destitute 
to the last degree. 

Thus we see, and I do not say it to inculpate the 
missionaries, but to put you on your guard, that, after 
more than twenty years labour, and an expenditure of 

* It would greatly help us in our attempt to discover the cure for 
the evils of New Zealand, if we could ascertain exactly at what price 
the natives sold their grain to the missionaries and other Europeans, 
and what wages were received for the labour which was withdrawn 
from the cultivation of their fields. Clear and accurate tables of the 
precise value of the different kinds of labour, and of all articles of 
consumption, both native and imported, would, I thiuk, be found one 
of the best securities for justice to the aborigines wherever the white 
and the coloured race are intermixed and have dealings in common ; 
and the longer these values continue variable and undetermined, the 
longer do we debar ourselves from the power of doing them justice. 
In fact, the main excellence of systematic colonization as compared 
with colonization without a system, is that the former tends to give 
a fixed value to everything beginning with the land, the latter tends 
to leave the value of everything undetermined, and offers free course 
to every species of chicanery and injustice. 



61 



more than 100,000/. on the part of the Church Mis- 
sionary Society, the natives are in a worse condition, 
as it respects food and clothing, than before the mis- 
sionaries arrived. 

To a plentiful supply of good food two things are 
necessary : — 

1st. That there should be food to obtain. 

2nd. That there should be means to obtain it. 

Both of these objects will be promoted by the sys- 
tematic colonization of New Zealand. 

It was stated by Mr. Coates, as a reason for supposing 
the waste of native life to be less than is represented, 
that the labours of missionaries tend to its preservation 
by promoting an increase of food ; under their hands, 
however, this particular effect could only be secondary 
and incidental, and it will be promoted in as much 
greater a degree by a large colony, as the number of 
persons in the colony devoted to its production by 
commerce and agriculture exceeds the number who 
can give themselves up to similar pursuits among the 
missionary agents. Nor should we infer, because Mr. 
Matthews tells us that the demand for food by mis- 
sionaries and others induced the natives to sell nearly 
all the grain they had, that a similar demand followed 
by similar results would be the consequence of the 
establishment of a regular colony. Because it cannot 
be supposed that there would be the same regularity 
in the supply of provisions, whether native or foreign, 
to a small, scattered, unorganized, and, in a great 
measure, artificially-supported community, as to a 
large colony fixed in one spot, the aggregate of whose 
wants it would always be easy to foresee and provide 
for. At the same time this fact should warn you to 
make sufficient provision beforehand both for your- 
selves and the natives. 

Their means of obtaining a supply of food must 
depend in a great measure upon the exertions they 



62 



shall make, and the way in which you will remune- 
rate them for their exertions. Should the "English 
labourer thrive in New Zealand, and the native 
labourer be paid as the English labourer, he will 
thrive too, if he does the same work ; and I have the 
strongest persuasion that all they require to make 
their work valuable to themselves and their employers, 
is to let them have fair play. Give the natives a fair 
prospect of raising themselves by their exertions to the 
same comfort and respectability which they see enjoyed 
by Englishmen, and they will have such an incentive 
to exertion as they have never had before. And let 
them have the means of providing themselves with a 
complete and comfortable dress, a sufficiency of whole- 
some food, and the necessary implements of labour, 
and it may be hoped that w r e shall not hear so much 
of their rapid decrease when brought in contact with 
Englishmen. 

It will be for the colonists to judge whether some 
encouragement ought not to be given to the manufac- 
ture of native mats. If the mat is a durable and use- 
ful article, suitable to their climate and habits, it is 
lamentable that the introduction of blankets should 
extinguish this branch of industry, and make the 
natives more wretched • than they were before. The 
mat for certain purposes might probably be made use 
of by Europeans, and this would promote both its use 
and its production among the natives. It will be easy 
to determine, by ascertaining the time and labour 
expended on its preparation as compared with its 
utility and the demand which is likely to be made for 
it, whether its manufacture ought to be continued or 
not. 

I have said before, that the natives would pro- 
bably be more inclined to assist you in the erection of 
great public buildings than to make comfortable dwel- 
lings for themselves. This, however, will only be an 



63 

additional reason why you should make for them such 
dwellings as will be most suited to their circumstances, 
and most likely to win them to civilization. 

III. The contraction of diseases, and the degrada- 
tion of native women. 

There is much contrariety of opinion as to the 
extent to which the natives have been affected by 
specific diseases, and little need be said upon the sub- 
ject, except that wherever such diseases occur their 
exact nature and cause should be carefully inquired 
into, and the proper remedies applied; and that 
wherever they are traceable to the misconduct of 
Europeans, measures should be taken to check the 
evil at its source. 

Another consequence of the misconduct of Euro- 
peans, and another reason for the diminished number 
of native children, may be the melancholy fact, that 
" their maidens are not given to marriage." " Their 
women, I am sorry to say," said one of the witnesses 
before the committee of the House of Lords, " are 
reserved for bad purposes." And from all that we 
have heard of the present state of New Zealand, the 
conduct of ships' crews, the infamous character of the 
New Zealand rovers, and the indifference of the un- 
converted natives to the purity of their females, we 
must believe his statement to be true. And to what- 
ever extent it is true, fewer marriages will be con- 
tracted among the natives, and fewer native children 
will be born. It is needless to say that this must be 
a direct cause of the diminution of the native race, 
not to speak of its degrading and depraving tendency ; 
and it should therefore be the zealous effort of the 
colonists to stop this evil wherever it exists, and to 
prevent it where it has not yet shown itself. It should 
be the object of the colonists to convey into the minds 
of the natives the anxious wish which they have to 
elevate them to the same social level with themselves, 



64 



and to let them know how indispensable it is for that 
purpose that their females should attach the same 
sense of disgrace to a loss of virtue which is attached 
to it by our countrywomen. I need not add that this 
should be accompanied by a united determination on 
the part of the colonists to regard an act of immorality 
in any of themselves as a serious injury to their com- 
mon objects, and a grave offence against the honour 
of their community. 

IV. The prejudicial effect produced upon their 
minds by the peculiarity of their new position. 

In the various degrees of semi-civilization in which 
the aborigines at present exist throughout New Zea- 
land, they cannot help feeling themselves reduced to a 
far lower grade of social life then they were in before. 
Where once they saw none above them, they now see 
none below them, and they are without the power of 
rising to that higher grade with which they are 
brought into contact, and by which they feel them- 
selves overwhelmed and pressed down. 

Now, upon a people so mentally constituted as the 
New Zealanders, this sense of degradation must, I 
think, have the most pernicious consequences. It is 
evident that the New Zealanders possess in a very 
strong degree that sense of personal estimation, which 
forms the basis of what is called the code of honour 
in civilized countries and polished society. It is not 
the highest form under which the feeling of honour 
exhibits itself, but it is a wild stem on which true 
honour may be engrafted. This sense of personal 
estimation is so acute in the New Zealander, that he 
commonly resorts to self-destruction as the only cure 
for its imagined injury. Indeed, I have already laid 
before you an allusion to this practice in the reply of 
Tebooa to Mr. Turner respecting his son Shunghi. 

In how many ways might not injury be given to 
so keen a sense of personal estimation, even by well- 



65 



intentionecl Europeans! In the past history of New 
Zealand, such an injury was resented by the massacre 
of seventy British subjects at a stroke. But the days 
are gone by when a whole ship's company could be 
sacrificed to the offended pride of a Savage Chieftain ; 
for subsequent experience has led them to believe that 
such a mode of vindicating their honour would only 
entail their own wholesale destruction. 

In the present state of things, therefore, they are 
obliged to acquiesce at whatever expense to their feel- 
ings. And while, by the award of British law, they 
are pronounced to be the possessors of vast territory 
and sovereign dominion, they see themselves sur- 
rounded by foreigners living in a state of comfort 
and affluence, which they feel that no exertions of 
theirs could ever attain ; they are tempted to use 
every means, even to the selling of every acre of 
their land, to the degradation of their wives and 
daughters, and to bodily toil in the same gang with 
their slaves to gain a little of that wealth which they 
see as if miraculously enjoyed by the British Settlers. 
The pitiful hire which they attain by these means is 
wholly inadequate to their elevation to the level of 
Europeans, and only just enough to obtain for them 
the momentary and intemperate enjoyment of some 
pernicious European luxury ; instead of becoming rich, 
they reduce themselves to beggary; and instead of 
the freedom of heart and thought, and the proud 
sense of having no human superiors which they once 
enjoyed, they are degraded in their own feelings, and 
they feel themselves to be a degraded race in the eyes 
of those who have now become their masters, — hope is 
extinguished — life has lost its value : while with 
those natives who have adopted Christianity, there 
will probably be a feeling that this altered posi- 
tion of things is one to which they ought to sub- 
mit, and that they must look to another world for 

p 



66 



the blessings and honours of which they have no 
share in this. 

It would not be surprising if, with feelings of this 
kind, and having lost the wild excitements of their 
savage state, they should have fallen into that idle, 
lounging, slovenly, and filthy condition, which is 
described by the Bishop of Australia as existing 
among the natives of the Bay of Islands. I hardly 
think it a sufficient explanation of this fact to say 
that the natives delight in filth and disorder. Natu- 
rally, it may be true, they regard them with no repug- 
nance ; but when we consider the neatness of the native 
workmanship, and the neatness of their mode of cul- 
tivating the ground, as witnessed and recorded by 
Captain Cook, I am inclined to think they would have 
acquired habits of order, neatness, and diligence during 
a twenty years'' residence with a well-disposed class of 
Europeans, if there had been the means of placing 
before them sufficiently valuable rewards of in- 
dustry. 

The animation and activity which is excited when 
any prospect of this kind is held in view, together with 
their natural diffidence of their own ability to realize 
such an object, are affectingly made evident in the 
following extract from the journal of Mr. Davis, the 
head of the Church Missionary Society's farming esta- 
blishment at Waimate, dated February 23rd, 1839. 

I was gratified to see so much wheat stacked here and there. 
Several little fields are still out. The crop is generally good. 
Hill [a Native] has three stacks already in his yard, and a 
staddle for the fourth. One of the ricks is large : the others 
are small. He has also some wheat in his little barn. Per- 
haps he has nearly 1501. worth of wheat there, altogether. 
This sight rejoiced my heart, and led me to consider that the 
introduction of agriculture would be a real blessing to them. 
The old Chief spoke to me seriously about building a mill in 
the district. This David Taiwanga had done before, and pro- 
posed a mode of payment, viz. in wheat. The Chief appeared 



67 



desirous that the growth of wheat should be encouraged ; but 
he said the mill at Waimate was so distant — ten miles — that 
the people would be weary of carrying it on their backs. I 
asked him how many oxen Hill had fit to work: he told 
me, only one. I told him to put the wheat on his back, and to 
take it to the mill ; but he seemed to view that as endless 
work, which in truth it is. 0 Lord, direct our steps at this 
important crisis ! I know they require a mill, and I have no 
doubt but they would pay for it in time. They appear to he 
anxious to emerge from their present state ; this they cannot do, 
unless they are taken by the hand. They have a fine district for 
agriculture ; and I fear, that unless they really see and feel its 
value, they may be prevailed on to part with a share of it, by 
some of the emigrants who are now travelling through the 
country. A mill would immediately enhance the value of the 
country, in their estimation, a hundred-fold. At Otaua, twelve 
miles further from Waimate than Kaikohi, there is much very 
fine wheat growing. They must be encouraged. 

March 20. — This morning, the Chiefs and people assembled 
to talk with me about a mill. After having given them my 
views on the subject, and explained the nature of things to 
them on religious principles, we addressed the Throne of Grace 
for direction on the important business on which we were 
about to proceed. We afterward went out to look for a fit 
place on which to put the mill, should it be built ; and found 
a spot where it can be built with comparatively little trouble. 
To-day they were all life and spirit, from the prospect of having 
a mill erected among them. 

March 21. — I had some further conversation about the mill. 
They are fearful that they shall never be able to pay for it. It 
appears to them to be a thing of too ponderous a nature. But 
passing events evidently point out that something must be 
done, in order to preserve their country to them, and to pre- 
serve them a people. The payment I do not conceive to be a 
difficulty. They are all anxious to begin to work about it 
themselves. They can saw the timber, and build the house, 
make the dam, and dig the race. The expenses to be incurred 
further will be, the mill-stones, iron and castings, and the 
labour of the millwright in making and fitting-up the gearing. 
The expenses, over and above what they can do themselves, 
will not, I trust, exceed 200/. This sum their rich country 
will enable them soon to pay, in grain. At this meeting they 
also agreed to commence cutting timber for a new Church, 
40 feet by 20 ; and to build a School-house of native materials. 

F 2 



68 



The timber for the Church they cut gratis ; that for the School 
I agreed to pay for. 

I think we may infer from this that they are not 
hopelessly wedded to their filthy and degraded con- 
dition, and that the way to raise them out of their 
present state is to place before them sufficiently valu- 
able objects of attainment. Such objects of attain- 
ment, when set before them, they will easily reach, if 
you give a proper direction to their efforts, and pay 
them such returns for their land, their labour, and 
their produce, as upon an enlightened and philosophic 
view of the case are just and equitable. 

I shall here insert a subsequent passage of Mr, 
Davis's Journal, as it bears upon the topic I have 
been most anxious to press upon your attention. 

April 3. — A trying day. Horses and oxen all running 
wildly about. The carter boys are about flying their kites, 
and the men in the woods shooting. I had some serious talk 
with some of them in the evening. / gave them to understand 
that their wages should not be altered; and requested, that 
those who were stopping with me merely for the sake of wages, 
and those who felt no regard for me, would go. Some time 
ago I heard that a fanning man, who is living at Hokianga, 
wanted a place. I sent for him to come over. 

April 4. — The steps taken last night have had the desired 
effect. To-day, nearly all have returned to their work. 

This passage might suggest many important in- 
quiries. It seems not improbable that the native 
labourers in this case abandoned their work because 
they were not satisfied with their wages ; it is evi- 
dent, at least, that they wanted an increase of wages 
to make them return to it. It is extremely desirable 
that we should know the exact amount of wages that 
they received, and that we could ascertain how far 
they were just and equitable as compared with the 
rate of wages in England. The best way to satisfy our- 
selves about this, would be to compare them with the 



69 



wages paid to the " farming man" for whom Mr. Davis 
wrote to Hokianga. If we knew the precise relative 
duties of the farming man and the native labourers, 
and the wages that persons occupying these relative 
positions would receive in England, and the wages 
that were actually paid to them respectively by Mr. 
Davis, we could determine whether the wages paid to 
the natives were equitable. My own very strong 
belief is, that they could not be equitable; for I think 
it extremely improbable that sawyers at Waimate, or 
in its near neighbourhood, should be content to receive 
such very mean returns for their labour*, while agri- 
cultural labourers in the same district obtained any- 
thing like a fair remuneration. Perhaps the mission- 
aries will acknowledge that the native labourer is not 
paid so much as an English labourer of the same class 
would receive, and will say in explanation, that a 
New Zealander never does a fair day's work ; but I 
would still urge the question, how much exactly does 
the New Zealander receive? and I would suggest 
whether the New Zealander would not be induced to 
do a fair day's work if he knew that he was to receive 
for it a price to the full as good as an Englishman 
would receive for the same work. 

Should it be as I am inclined to believe, I do not 
say that Mr. Davis or any other individual missionary 
is to blame ; but I say that it forms part of a system 
which is very much to blame, and which must end in 
the destruction of the native race. And I cannot 
help thinking, that if since the first influx of British 
settlers into New Zealand, now ten or fifteen years 
ago, the missionaries had determinately set their face 
against any attempt to obtain the labour of the New 
Zealanders for less than an equitable remuneration, 
and out of the pecuniary resources at their command 
had given ample pay to the natives for every species of 

* See Shaw's Letter, page 37. 



70 



labour about which they employed them, several most 
important results would have followed. 

1st. It may be supposed that some, if not all of 
them, would have been induced by the influence of 
the missionaries to lay by, in some public fund of the 
nature of a savings' bank, all the wages they received 
beyond what was necessary to supply their daily 
wants. 

2nd. These accumulations would by this time 
have amounted, in many cases, to large sums, and 
would have given to those possessing them a sense of 
property and independence. 

3rd. They would have been available in times of 
sickness and scarcity, such as that witnessed by the 
Bishop of Australia, or for helping to build a mill, or 
any other such purpose. 

4th. They would have set before the other natives 
an evident proof of the value of continued labour. 

5th. The larger reward would have excited the 
natives to greater industry, and they would have 
acquired more active, lively, and diligent habits; 
there would have been a spring to their motions 
which would have quickly raised them out of that 
state of indolence and apathy which was witnessed 
and lamented by the Bishop of Australia. While a 
system of definite remuneration, accompanied, as it 
should be, by definite prices, affixed to every article 
with which they could be supplied out of the mis- 
sionary stores, would have engendered a feeling of 
self-dependence, and have afforded less occasion for 
the "duplicity" and " covetousness," which, with in- 
dolence, appeared to him to be the "chief remaining 
vices of the converted natives." And his opinion as 
to the source of these vices confirms the view that I 
have here expressed : — 

The source of all these ma}^ probably be found in the 
ability of the missionaries and other Europeans to supply their 




limited wants, in return for a very moderate amount of labour; 
and it is a natural, perhaps necessary, consequence, that they 
should anxiously desire the possession of articles so strange, 
and at the same time so valuable to them, as the Europeans 
have to offer; as well as that, through their prevailing anxiety 
to obtain those much-coveted conveniences, they should adopt 
a fawning and submissive air toward those who have the means 
of bestowing them. — Letter of Bishop of Australia in Church 
Missionary Record for Dec. 1839, p. 292. 

6th. Had the missionaries from the first fixed the 
rate of wages at a just standard, other Europeans 
would have been less able to exact the labour of the 
natives for an insufficient remuneration. 

The foregoing matter has led me to make some 
reflections on the principle by which we should be 
guided in settling the rate of wages for such a country 
as New Zealand; and I here submit them to your 
consideration. 

It is perfectly obvious, that for the social or econo- 
mical machinery of a people to be in good order and 
work well, nothing is more essential than that there 
should be a well-calculated scale of remunerations to 
excite and reward the energies of the different mem- 
bers of the community in their several spheres. In 
all civilized countries there is some such scale of 
remunerations, and the degree of perfection of the 
whole commonwealth and the relative happiness and 
efficiency of its several parts depends very much 
upon the wisdom with which this scale is adjusted. 
If, therefore, we wish to lay the foundation of a pro- 
sperous and happy people, we must do all we can 
from the very outset to make the scale of wages adjust 
itself according to the best possible principle. And 
if we have before us the example of a country like 
England, which may be said, upon the whole, to be 
a prosperous and happy one, we may adopt it for our 
model, unless we have some reason for supposing that 
we can improve upon it. 



72 



Now, in England and other free and civilized 
countries, the remunerations received for all other 
descriptions of industry are proportioned in different 
ratios to the wages of the agricultural labourer, and it 
is a received maxim of political economy, that the 
price of a fair day's work of an agricultural labourer 
should be the same as that of a peck of wheat. If 
his pay differs much from this, things will be more or 
less out of joint and in danger throughout the commu- 
nity. And if this be so in all free, civilized, and 
happy countries, it must be made to be so in New 
Zealand, or its natives will not be civilized, will not 
be formed into a happy people. 

That the general production of wheat is held to be 
the prime ingredient, and, as it were, the index of the 
civilization of a country may be inferred from the very 
fact that it is the first object which those who are 
engaged in the work of civilization endeavour to pro- 
mote ; and if we have ascertained by an extended 
observation of the state of things in free and happy 
countries, the remunerating stimulus that is necessary 
in order to effect the production of wheat, we may 
infer that where this stimulus is wanting wheat will 
not be produced, and that to attempt to produce it, 
will be to overtask and exhaust the producing class. 
The New Zealand labourer therefore should be paid 
per day, the price that a peck of wheat would fetch in 
New Zealand, or we cannot expect that he will have 
the stimulus that is necessary to make wheat grow : 
he labours at a disadvantage to himself: the state of the 
country is a forced and an unhealthy one, and it may 
be expected that he will either give up the work from 
an instinctive feeling that it is not worth his while to 
continue it, or labouring at a disadvantage, will sink 
for want of the necessary stamina. 

These appear to me to be natural conclusions from 
an admitted principle; if there is anything defective in 



73 



this reasoning, or anything in the particular case of 
New Zealand, which exempts it from the general rule, 
I should be happy to have it pointed out and to 
acknowledge my error. But I do not see it myself, 
and I think I am borne out in my views by the pre- 
sent condition of the New Zealanders in the mis- 
sionary settlements. I would add that I have no, 
knowledge of the actual amount of wages paid by the 
missionaries to the native labourers, but I infer that 
where the labour of the saw-pit is paid so badly, the 
labour of the field by the same race in the same dis- 
trict will be paid no better. 

Perhaps it will be said, that when the missionaries 
began to cultivate wheat to any extent in New Zea- 
land, it was so scarce an article in the country, that 
the price of a peck would have been something too 
extravagant to allow for a day's work to a native. But 
what would be the consequence if, notwithstanding 
this, the principle had been strictly acted on ? In my 
opinion it would have had two results, both highly 
conducive to legitimate and sound-principled civiliza- 
tion. In the first place, it would have indicated to 
them that the most prudent step at that stage of their 
proceedings, was to make wheat plentiful, to import 
it in large quantities, and store it up in granaries, by 
which means a wholesome food would be always at 
hand, for the use both of natives and Europeans ; the 
natives would not have been obliged to have recourse 
to their rotten maize, nor the Europeans to the grain 
raised by the natives. And in the next place, by 
offering a very high remuneration to the natives, they 
would have been induced to apply themselves more 
actively and in greater numbers to the cultivation of 
the soil, and wheat would have been raised in greater 
quantities at home. By the combined action of both 
these causes wheat would have been rendered plenti- 
ful, and the price of labour would have been lowered 



without detriment to the labourer. The most im- 
portant article of food would have become cheap, and 
by its constant use, would in all probability have 
improved the native constitution, and made it more 
able and more disposed for continuous exertion. It is 
probable, too, that if it had been felt that to make 
wheat cheap, was a step of the utmost importance to 
civilization, there would not have been so great an 
importation of blankets into the country ; and instead 
of that which has too evidently proved a pernicious 
luxury — the introduction of which has had the triple 
ill effect of checking a branch of native industry, of 
being fatal to their health in many instances, and 
causing them to adopt an inferior description of 
clothing to that which they wore in their primitive 
state, — they would have had in plenty the prime 
sustenance and most substantial aliment of life. Its 
use would have become general, the labour necessary 
to obtain it would have been cheerfully undergone, 
and native health and native industry would have 
flourished together. 

To effect these objects, a bold outlay of money 
would have been necessary for the double purpose of 
importing large quantities of wheat, and paying a 
high price for native labour. But good food and good 
wages are such powerful incentives to industry, that I 
think this outlay would long since have been recom- 
pensed by the improved condition, both of the people 
and of the country, and the increased facility the mis- 
sion would have had for supporting itself without 
drawing so largely upon the funds of the Missionary 
Society. 

If it be objected that in England, and other well 
civilized countries, such a state of things naturally 
grows out of the circumstances of society, and that 
we ought to leave such arrangements to the natural 
course of things, and not attempt to produce them by 



75 



artificial means, — the answer is, that our whole object 
in the present inquiry is to arrest the natural course of 
things, seeing that they now tend directly to the ruin 
and extinction of the natives. 

Artificial means are not to be disregarded because 
nature sometimes works without them. God has 
given to man a power regulative of nature, even in 
those matters which are farthest withdrawn from his 
usual sphere of operation. Artificial means are some- 
times necessary to give its first motion, or restore its 
suspended action, to the vital machinery of the human 
frame. And if this is true in the case of bodily life, 
whose functions for the most part are so independent 
of extrinsic regulation, may there not be something 
analogous in that which falls so much more under 
human control, the life social and political ? 

The preceding digression relates to what might 
have been done by the missionaries for the temporal 
and civil welfare of the New Zealanders ten years ago, 
and may, I think, afford some hints as to what may 
be done by you to secure similar benefits for the natives 
with whom you will be thrown more immediately 
into contact. It is true, that in the case of the mis- 
sionaries there were public funds with which they 
could have given the necessary stimulus, and a suffi- 
cient reward to native industry, and that no such 
funds are at your disposal. But since in your case 
the existence of a large amount of European labour 
will tend to fix the price of labour at an equitable 
rate, it will be your chief business to see that a 
uniform price is paid for work done, whether it be 
done by an Englishman or a New Zealander. 

I have been thus led to recur once more to the 
subject of wages ; but I am glad of it, for the more 
I hear of the present circumstances of New Zealand, 
the more I am convinced that the inadequate pay of 
native labour is one of the most destructive and least 



76 



suspected forms of injury inflicted on them by Euro- 
peans. 

I will now return to the subject which led me to 
this digression, — the importance, for the preservation 
of native life, of keeping the native mind in a healthy 
state of excitement, hope, and satisfaction. 

This I think would be secured to the natives in 
general by giving them employment which would 
interest their minds ; by rewarding them sufficiently 
for their work ; and letting them find that the pro- 
gress of civilization among them was the fulfilment, 
and not the disappointment, of their hopes. 

But a still more exciting and elevating effect may 
be produced upon the whole people, by that which 
forms the distinguishing feature of your scheme, as 
contrasted with every other project which has ever 
been set on foot for the benefit of aboriginal tribes, 
namely, the provision which has been made for ena- 
bling the native chiefs to sustain their place among 
the gentry of the future community. 

The material provision which is requisite for the 
maintenance of the native lords of New Zealand in 
their relative position of superiority has been amply 
made in the reserve of one-tenth of all the land pur- 
chased by the Company for the future benefit of the 
chiefs and their families. How far they may be fitted 
for such a position will depend upon the wisdom with 
which the intercourse between the settlers and the 
natives is conducted, and the institutions which are 
framed for the government and regulation of the 
country, either by the native chiefs themselves, under 
the instructions of the settlers, should they prefer 
to retain the independence which has been so empha- 
tically asserted to belong to them*, — or by the crown 
of England, or the constituted authorities in New 

* See Appendix, — " Thoughts on the Formation of a Constitu- 
tion for New Zealand," page 119. 



Zealand, should they make a formal cession of their 
independence to this country. 

§ Of Laws and Civil Institutions for New Zealand. 

I am now brought to a topic which I naturally 
approach with the greatest diffidence, as it is by far 
the most important and most delicate that can be 
discussed with respect to New Zealand, and is beset 
with difficulties of every kind. 

Those who opposed the New Zealand Association 
of 1837 were anxious for the establishment of a native 
dynasty governed by laws framed with an especial 
view to native interests, and administered by natives. 
I should have rejoiced had it been possible to realize 
a project so novel and so chivalrously benevolent to 
the aborigines. But I believe that such expectations 
are now given up by every one. It only remains for 
us to hope that the whole New Zealand question will 
be taken up by Government, and that the collective 
wisdom of the legislature will be exerted in the con- 
struction of a scheme which shall provide for all the 
peculiarities of the New Zealand case, and lay the 
foundation of one uniform, powerful, and happy state. 

The grand difficulty that besets the case is, that at 
present the sovereignty of New Zealand may be said 
to be in abeyance. Whether it will be obtained by 
England, or retained by New Zealand ; or whether the 
country will be parcelled out into little separate sove- 
reignties, (some under Great Britain, some under 
single chiefs, and some under congresses of chiefs,) it 
is impossible to say ; and it is therefore impossible to 
say what individual, or what body of individuals, 
should be addressed with a view to the establishment 
of a good constitution and code of laws for New 
Zealand. 



78 



That neither you nor any other body of English- 
men resident in New Zealand, can legally enact laws 
for your own government, has been decided. But it 
is by no means so certain that you will not be called 
upon to propose laws to be enacted and executed by 
the native chiefs in the territory where you reside. 
This the missionaries of the London Society have 
done for the natives of Otaheite, and the same thing 
might be done with equal propriety by the Church 
missionaries for the natives of the Bay of Islands, 
or by you for the natives of Port Nicholson. 

So that, — although I believe you will agree with 
me in thinking that such a contingency is neither to be 
expected nor desired, — it will not be altogether out of 
place to address you upon this subject. And, indeed, 
whether British sovereignty is established or not, 
every British inhabitant of New Zealand must exercise 
an important influence over the future destinies of 
that country ; and the law must leave much to be 
determined by the opinion and will of individuals, 
whether acting separately or conjointly. 

One thing I trust may be anticipated with con- 
fidence, that some laws will be made with an especial 
reference to the circumstances of the natives. For to 
submit them at once to the rigorous action of British 
law, would be to oppress and exterminate them under 
a show of justice, — the most cruel and most wicked 
way in which a helpless and confiding people can be 
destroyed. 

For a rigorous subjection to British law they are 
unfitted on two most important accounts : — 1st, 
Because British law is law suited not for a savage, 
but for a highly civilized people ; and 2nclly, Because 
British law is law suited for a people of one race ; — 
whereas the inhabitants of New Zealand are of two 
races, not merely differing in language and national 
usage, but in every possible way in which two people 



79 



can be contrasted. Hence the absolute necessity of 
exceptional or special laws of some kind or other ; — 
of special laws to regulate the course of justice be- 
tween British and native, and special laws to regulate 
the course of justice between native and native. 

§ Considerations to be kept in mew in making Laws 
for the New Zealanders. 

When I first thought of sending you this address, 
I believed that, once landed on the shores of an inde- 
pendent country, you would possess as against the 
crown of England a natural right of self-government ; 
that it would be open to you and the other colonists 
of New Zealand to organize yourselves into bodies co- 
operating together for the common good, and agreed 
upon certain broad principles of fair dealing among 
yourselves, and just and judicious treatment of the 
Aborigines. 

This impression I have since found was an erro- 
neous one : you have no right of self-government, and 
no encouragement to investigate the principles of 
social organization most suited to your peculiar cir- 
cumstances. You may be now, and may continue to 
be when this reaches you, in a state of perplexity as 
to your actual position, and uncertainty as to your 
future prospects. While therefore I feel that the 
prosperity or the ruin of the natives within the sphere 
of your influence mainly depends on you, I ought 
not to address you as if you could make laws for 
them, or bind yourselves by laws in their favour. 

At the same time there can be no harm in my 
stating to you a few considerations which I think 
ought to be borne in mind by those who will have it 
in their power to make laws for the New Zealanders, 
and by you and all other British settlers, until such 
laws are made. 



80 



We should first consider that they are a people 
having already among them certain conventional 
rights and usages, which may be called the common 
or customary law of the land. And it has not been 
usual for England to interfere with customs having 
this character, in her subject states, even where they 
have been quite contrary to our customs, and built 
on totally different views of morality. They ought, 
therefore, with much more reason, to be respected, 
when no charge of immorality or variance from 
natural justice can be made against them. 

Among these there are some which w r e very pro- 
bably do not yet understand; but which, so far from 
being a proof of savage ignorance, seem to mark 
them as connected with the whole family of man. 
The customs to which I here more particularly allude, 
will be easily recognised by their New Zealand 
names. 

§ Of Taboo and Utu. 

These words indicate national practices, which 
have greatly assisted the missionaries in addressing 
the natives upon the vital truths of Christianity, by 
having familiarized their minds with the ideas of 
being set apart and made sacred, and of the necessity 
of payment or propitiation; and which, though some- 
times rudely administered, have still in them a 
character of ordinance and retributive justice. 

I think that we should carefully examine them 
and observe the forms under which they exhibit 
themselves in the institutions of the country, and en- 
deavour, without abolishing them altogether, to purify 
and improve their action, and make them subservient 
to the progress of Christianity and law. 

It is very likely that under some form or other 
these usages will speedily present themselves to your 
notice, and may be a subject of unexpected annoy- 



81 



ance to you. Just as a submission to local imposts 
and examinations is an annoyance to those who travel 
on the Continent ; but as necessity obliges us to sub- 
mit to the latter, so justice and our frequently declared 
respect for New Zealand rights demand that we should 
deal gently with the former. 

I am particular in making these remarks, because 
I believe that some trouble was experienced when the 
Tory was in Cook's Straits, in consequence of an utu 
being charged against Colonel Wakefield for having 
trespassed on a tabooed place. The matter, Colonel 
Wakefield says, was settled, — how, we are not told, — 
but I trust it was in a manner which did not roughly 
interfere with the established custom of the country. 

For another instance of the kind I am indebted 
to the Church Missionary Record. The story is a very 
painful one, whether we consider it as an exhibition 
of the vices of the native character in its unreclaimed 
state, or as indicating a course which appears to me 
to have been injudiciously adopted in dealing with 
their customs. 

The facts of the case are briefly these. On the 
19th of July, 1838, Taraia, a chief of Ngatetematara, 
came to Maraetai, (where Mr. Fairburn was residing 
with his family,) in a war canoe accompanied by thirty 
armed men. His object was to exact an utu, which 
he appears to have long demanded, for a wahi tapib 
which had been trodden on by Mr. Fairburn's cows. 
The charge was no doubt a vexatious and unpleasant 
one ; but, if it w 7 as made in strict accordance with 
what may be called the customary law of New Zea- 
land, it ought to have been respected. And it would 
seem from the terms in which Taraia made known 
the object of his visit to Mr. Fairburn, that he made 
his demand more for the sake of what he believed to be 
his right than of making any considerable acquisition : 
he had not come, he said, to behave ill or to do him an 

G 



82 



injury, but he wanted a payment, however small, for 
his icahi-tapu. Mr. Fairburn continues : — " I told 
him he knew very well that those matters had all 
been settled long ago, when he, among others, signed 
a document to that effect at the Puriri ; which docu- 
ment I produced, and showed him his signature. 
This seemed to puzzle him a little. He then argued 
that the wahi tapa was not included. After telling 
him that the boundaries named included everything, 
I cut the matter short by assuring him that I did not 
intend to give anything moreT 

In the discussions upon the feasibility and justice 
of colonizing New Zealand, it was frequently asserted 
that when the New Zealanders sold their land they 
did not intend to part with it altogether, or wholly to 
divest themselves of the rights which they possessed 
in respect of it ; and it is extremely likely that the 
right of demanding utu for the desecration of a wahi 
tapu is the very last of which a New Zealander con- 
ceives that he divests himself, when he sells land to 
an European, or rather when he joins with other chiefe 
in signing a document, the full purport of which it is 
impossible for him to understand, although the Euro- 
pean may believe that it conveys the land in fee- 
simple. Nor is there anything more absurd in this 
exaction than in many of the customs which our law 
still retains in relation to certain kinds of tenure. 
But the New Zealander had no precedents to allege, 
nor any lawyers to plead his cause, nor any court of 
justice to try the question at issue; and the English- 
man, therefore, had full power to cut the matter short 
by refusing to pay. 

Mr. Fairbunvs refusal to make any kind of 
atonement for the trespass on the sacred place was 
followed by a great deal of intimidation on the part 
of the natives, but no act of violence against Mr. 
Fairburn or his property; they were detained for a 



83 



week by bad weather in his boat-house, and, as he heard 
before the end of that time that their provisions were 
consumed, he sent them out of compassion a large 
basket of corn, for which they were thankful ; and two 
days afterwards they left Maraetai. 

But the mischief had not come to an end ; released 
from the overpowering awe which paralyzed their 
arms in the presence of the European, and exasperated 
no doubt by the fruitlessness of their late endeavour, 
they crossed over the country to the banks of a river 
in the Waikato district called Horotiu, where they 
found seven individuals in a solitary house, six of 
whom they murdered, and " brought bach their limbs 
as evidences of their success" in this horrible exploit. 

That a degree of sanctity should attach to the place 
where a dead body has reposed, is not an instance of 
barbarism but of sympathy with the universal feelings 
of the human kind. We display this sympathy our- 
selves in the care with which we fence the monu- 
ments of our kindred, and the pains we take to pre- 
serve our cemeteries from violation. Nor should we 
forget the minute and troublesome regulations which 
were imposed upon the Jews by the laws of Moses in 
reference to the accidental defilement which they con- 
tracted by touching a dead body, or entering the place 
where a dead body lay. All this should lead us to 
respect any regulations of a similar kind which we 
find existing among an infant people. 

But while it is incumbent upon the British settlers 
to treat such institutions with respect, it would be 
quite possible, in the pliant state of the mind and 
national habits of the New Zealanders, so to circum- 
scribe and modify them as to render them a benefit, 
instead of an injury to the public. The wahi tapus, 
while retaining their sacred character and imposing 
the necessity of paying utu for their desecration, might 
be limited in number and place ; they might be made 

G 2 



84 



fixed and permanent, instead of shifting and acci- 
dental ; they might become, in fact, the cemeteries of 
the country ; and while the solemnity of the taboo 
should be retained, any gross and superstitious notions 
respecting it might be removed ; the amount of utu 
might also be fixed, and become a mere harmless fine 
for trespass on a burying ground. 

Besides the right of demanding compensation for 
trespass, the New Zealanders possess, under the sanc- 
tion of their utu, a right of becoming individually 
avengers of blood, by exacting a life in return for that 
which has been taken ; and it has often been repre- 
sented as leading from murder to murder, until the 
very existence of whole tribes has been endangered. 

This law of retaliation has prevailed in the early 
history of all people, and ought to be superseded — not 
by the more sweeping and certain vengeance of a still 
sterner law, which would confound in one common 
destruction, both manslayer and avenger of blood; 
but, according to the course which has been adopted 
in all former cases of a like kind, by substituting in 
its place the law of compensation. For it is certain 
"that one of the first steps towards civility in the 
infancy of all nations, has been the substitution in 
criminal justice of fines proportionate to the offences, 
for the savage law of retaliation and the right of 
private revenge*." 

As they designate their right of revenge, as well as 
their right of demanding compensation, by the single 
term of utu, it is very probable that they confound the 
two ideas. And a remarkable instance of this con- 
fusion of ideas, appears in the conduct of Teraia, who 
having failed in obtaining the compensation that he 
required, proceeded to take the lives of six individuals. 
But it should be the object of the reformers of their 



* Moore's History of Ireland. 



85 



laws to point out the distinction between the two 
ideas, and to substitute the bloodless payment for the 
exaction of blood. 

Another right akin to that of the avenger of blood, 
and which could probably be got rid of in the same 
way, is the private right which they exercise of 
avenging the dishonour of their beds by taking the 
life of the adulterer. 

It is possible too that the law of compensation, 
besides being a good substitute for the bloody law of 
retaliation, might in the first stages of improved 
native justice be made use of as a punishment for 
certain crimes, which the New Zealanders may con- 
sider themselves entitled to commit by a kind of 
prescriptive right, such as infanticide, arbitrary de- 
struction of slaves, &c. For independently of the 
degree in which we may suppose their national honour 
to be involved, in claiming the right to exercise these 
crimes according to their common law, their punish- 
ment as capital offences might be very oppressive, from 
the inadequate notions which they have been accus- 
tomed to entertain respecting their moral guilt, and 
the slight value which, as compared with other human 
beings, they attach to the possession of life. 

§ On the Institutions of Slavery and Polygamy. 

The institutions of Slavery and Polygamy are 
wholly inconsistent with our legal and moral codes, 
though they have been tolerated by the legislatures of 
more civilized countries than New Zealand. But bad 
as they are, they have the absolute sanction of the 
present unw T ritten law of that country, and the natives 
are no doubt firmly attached to them. Now, if it be 
an immediate consequence of the establishment of 
British sovereignty, to put them down by force, should 
not the native chiefs who are invited to give up their 



86 



sovereignty be made fully aware, that such will be 
the consequence of its cession I 

It has been represented as an advantage in the 
position occupied by the missionaries, that it was out 
of their power to force any alteration in the laws and 
customs of the people; that they were obliged to 
tolerate them and submit to them, and had no other 
way but that of example and Christian instruction, to 
bring them over to less barbarous usages. And it is a 
question, whether British law should in either of these 
respects make a sudden and forcible innovation on 
New Zealand custom. 

If these practices could be laid aside by universal 
consent, and if the chiefs could be sufficiently remune- 
rated for the loss of privilege they would incur by the 
abolition of slavery, it would be extremely desirable. 
But in the absence of such universal consent it be- 
comes I think a serious question, whether the esta- 
blishment of British sovereignty ought to be more 
subversive of the unwritten but customary law of New 
Zealand, than it is of the Mahomedan or Gentoo laws 
of more civilized countries. 

§ Of the more barbarous practices of New Zealand, 

But customs of a far deeper shade of guilt are sanc- 
tioned by the common usage of the country. Canni- 
balism, infanticide, and the murder of one another in 
cool blood, are not the less horrible because they have 
now become familiar to our minds as practised by the 
New Zealanders. Such practices — and there are per- 
haps others, of which we have not heard and should 
not wish to hear — cannot be tolerated. But even 
they should be abolished without an appearance of 
tyranny, and without involving a loss of native life. 

With reference to these usages, every Christian 
will echo the words of Lord Normanby, " The savage 



87 



practices of human sacrifice and of cannibalism must 
be promptly and decisively interdicted. Such atroci- 
ties, under whatever plea of religion they may take 
place, are not to be tolerated within any part of the 
dominions of the British Crown*." While, with Cap- 
tain Hohson, we are strongly prompted to inquire in 
reply, whether, upon the failure of other means, the 
British authorities would be sanctioned in putting 
them down by force. 

§ Expedients to meet the Difficulties of the Case. 

The above review of the evils and atrocities which 
are sanctioned by the custom of New Zealand, must 
strongly impress us with the obligations we are under 
to Missionary exertions, in having done so much 
towards their abolishment throughout the country. 
And, although I am far from thinking that such exer- 
tions can accomplish all that is required in New Zea- 
land, nothing, I am sure, can so effectually put an end 
to all that excites our abhorrence there, as the univer- 
sal diffusion of purifying and elevating principles, 
either by the example and improving intercourse of a 
Christian community, or the public and private in- 
structions of a Christian ministry. 

But I shall now state briefly some particular mea- 
sures which I think might be useful in dealing wuth 
the difficulties of the case. I shall make my sugges- 
tions upon the supposition that British sovereignty is 
established over the whole of New Zealand, or at least 
over the Company's territory. And from what I say 
under this supposition, you will readily infer the 
course that I should recommend, in case the natives 
refuse to yield their sovereignty, and desire you to 
make laws for them. 

L I think the first business of the British consti- 

* Correspondence, page 40. 



88 



tuted authorities, in reference to criminal affairs, should 
be to observe and not to act. 

(1.) To arrange and classify according to their 
different amounts of guilt the various crimes and enor- 
mities habitually committed by New Zealanders. 

(2.) To observe and ascertain the different degrees 
of criminality or illegality which may be attached to 
them, according to New Zealand estimation. 

(3.) To inquire what punishments, either in ac- 
cordance with the lex talionis or in any more formal 
manner, are usually awarded to particular crimes. 

(4.) To inquire what native customs respecting 
crime might with advantage be systematized and con- 
solidated, so as to make punishment fixed and distinct, 
instead of random and uncertain; what native cus- 
toms should be abolished as being in themselves cri- 
minal and contrary to humanity, and what new penal 
laws should be enacted. 

But let it not be supposed that in dissuading from 
an early exercise of penal measures, I mean that cri- 
minal acts ought not to he prevented. Let every effort 
be made, let no pains be spared, to prevent them. 
W ere a murder about to be committed, either of a 
child by its mother, a slave by his master, a victim by 
the priest, or a captive by the conqueror, there is a 
law above every law, which would impel us to rush 
in and prevent the butchery, even at the risk of our 
own life. In such cases the authority of the British 
magistrate may safely be interposed; and it is to be 
hoped that his calm presence and strong prohibitory 
arm, will be sufficient to put an effectual stop to all 
such proceedings throughout New Zealand, There 
must be in every human soul, civilized or savage, such 
an innate consciousness of the guilt of such actions, 
as to invest with a character of rectitude the power 
interposed for their prevention, even though that 
power have no civil right to exercise its authority for 



89 



such a purpose ; and these firm prohibitory acts would 
deepen in the New Zealand mind, the innate sense of 
the guilt of such atrocities, as their own old custo- 
mary usage has long tended to weaken it. But it is 
j one thing to prevent a crime, and it is another thing 
to punish it by death when it has been committed. 

II. Whatever laws issuing from British authority 
are brought to bear upon the natives, ought first fco 
have the sanction of the natives themselves, and after- 
wards to be thoroughly made known throughout the 
country. The office analogous to that of herald which 
they are said to have among themselves, would proba- 
bly afford facilities for this measure. It appears to 
me that if this be not done, the course pursued in order 
to invest Great Britain with the sovereignty of the 
country, is a deception. If native consent is necessary 
in the one case, it is also necessary in the other. Bri- 
tish sovereignty is not British despotism, and will not 
authorize an overthrow of the institutions of the 
country. The natives should find that the establish- 
ment of our dominion on their shores, is not the anni- 
hilation of their political existence. It is evident 
from the measures which they take previously to the 
alienation of their lands, that they have some kind of 
social organization among themselves; that they have 
methods for ascertaining the public will, and making 
it the rule of their proceedings. This certainly ought 
not to be abolished, but modified in such a manner as 
to find its place among the future institutions of the 
country. It ought especially to be made use of in 
order to lay before the natives, and confirm by their 
sanction any change which it may be desirable to 
make in the customary law of their country respecting 
criminal matters. 

III. The difficulty of establishing a good penal 
code in New Zealand may suggest the advantage of 
adopting, in the case of an infant people, what is 



90 



found so advantageous in the training of all other 
infants, the principle of rewards and honours. This 
principle is incompatible with an advanced condition 
of society, where a knowledge of the benefit of right 
doing is motive sufficient for the great majority; but 
there are many reasons for its adoption in the manage- 
ment of New Zealanders. For they, like infants, 
will not practice wdiat is right for its own sake; but 
will easily be led to prize it for any arbitrary value we 
may append to it; and w T ill by habit learn to esteem 
it as it deserves for its intrinsic worth. 

No objection on the ground of right can be made 
against this mode of governing. If we establish a. 
system of rewards and honours, we make for ourselves 
a legitimate and merciful instrument of punishment, 
by having the power of withholding rewards and 
depriving of honours. 

And it would be far from difficult to devise a system 
of rewards and honours, which, with very little ex- 
pense and trouble to the settlers, would be most highly 
valued, and afford the strongest impulse to good con- 
duct among the natives. 

One mode of conferring honours would be to place 
them in offices of authority and trust. It is a fact 
confirmed by the testimony of those w T ho have had 
experience in the training of youth, whether in the 
navy or in public schools, that the very circumstance 
of being placed in a position of trust and authority, 
has often proved sufficient to call forth the qualities 
required for its discharge, where before there were no 
symptoms of their existence. 

Nor would distinctions purely honorary be without 
their use. One might, perhaps, suggest a ribbon, or a 
medal, or enrolment in an order of merit*. 

* Should it be thought advisable, as before suggested, to indivi- 
dualize the families of the chiefs by conferring on each of them a 
distinct heraldic device, an easy method of stimulating to honourable 



91 



The very plan proposed to you as a substitute for 
law by the Directors of the New Zealand Company, 
when they found that "the agreement" was illegal, 
might be sq modified as to operate upon the natives, and 
have the force of law without its penal enactments*. 
We know how men are led by opinion in their esti- 
mate of honours, and what a natural taste we have 
for everything which gives us distinction, and identi- 
fies us with an honourable body. We may well be- 
lieve, therefore, that if some of the principal members 
of the Colony would form themselves into an honour- 
able association, into which it should be made a great 
privilege to enter, but which should be open to the 
native chiefs — if no one could be admitted into this 
association who was disgraced by habitual misconduct, 
and who had not gone through some preparatory dis- 
cipline, including perhaps a course of military exer- 
cises, and if it imposed on its members an obligation 
to protect the injured, to prevent atrocities, to honour 
and respect women, and to keep faith, I think the 

conduct, or punishing for crime, might be found in the old heraldic 
usage of indicating an augmentation or diminution of honour, by 
certain specific changes in the armorial bearings. And although this 
idea may seem strange to us, among whom the original purposes of 
heraldry have fallen into disuse, it would be easily understood by 
them. Especially if, as it has been said, there is something of an 
heraldic character in amoko, or device with which their faces are 
tattooed. Indeed, as far as we are able to judge, a disposition to the 
use of heraldic emblems is observable in most primitive people, and 
has frequently been adverted to as existing among the North Ameri- 
can Indians. 

* The Directors are of opinion that the settlers may readily sub- 
stitute for the agreement certain prescribed rules for the settlement 
of disputes, and the repression of offences, by means obviously not 
illegal : such, for example, as expulsion from an Association for Order, 
of which all the colonists should at first be members, together with 
what is termed u sending to Coventry," or exclusion from social in- 
tercourse with all who remained faithful to the rules of the association, 
that is, with the whole body of settlers, except the few whose mis- 
conduct would thus be punished, by their being marked and shunned, 
as^outcasts, in the midst of an orderly and moral community. 



92 



native chiefs would be extremely desirous to enter it, 
and that it might have very valuable results. 

IV. Before dismissing this subject, I am desirous 
of saying a few words on the mode of punishing the 
natives for crimes committed on Europeans. 

The course to adopt in prescribing and enforcing 
the law in these cases is plainer than might at first 
sight appear. For a long time the natives have 
almost wholly abstained from such acts, and they are 
fully aware of the guilt and danger of committing 
them. And from their natural awe of the English, 
and their habit of considering them as a kind of 
superior beings, they would feel less disposed to con- 
sider themselves as hardly dealt with, if punished 
according to the rigour of British law for the murder 
of an Englishman, than if they received a similar 
punishment for inflicting death on one of their own 
people according to the right or the licence granted to 
them by the customary laws of their country. 

The murder of an European by a native is a new 
thing, and happily a rare thing, and one for which 
the customary law of New Zealand has made no pro- 
vision, unless it be the general provision of the law of 
retaliation, and therefore they will be the less sur- 
prised if British law should take upon itself to be the 
common avenger of all such murders. It is when a 
New Zealander does that which is no violation of the 
customs of his country, that he would have reason to 
be surprised if British law should interpose, and say 
that he had done a thing worthy of death. 

In the former case, therefore, I think there could 
be no objection to follow a precedent which has, I 
believe, already been established, namely, to try the 
natives by a jury consisting of one half native and one 
half British ; while, in the latter case, we should not 
be too precipitate, since, up to the present time, the 
New Zealanders have had no idea of being interfered 



93 

with by foreign laws in their transactions among one 
another. It is one thing to be under the fatherly 
superintendence of a wise and benevolent guardian 
state, and it is another thing to become subject to the 
iron hand and indiscriminating vengeance of a code 
of laws of which we know nothing, and which we are 
by custom continually violating. 

In this respect there is a remarkable contrast be- 
tween the actual circumstances of the natives of 
Australia and the possible circumstances of the New 
Zealanders. From the greater wildness of the former, 
crimes, except when perpetrated on Europeans, can 
seldom come under the cognizance of the magistrate, 
and therefore, although their country has long been 
subject to British law, they may among themselves 
be lawless with impunity. While, in respect of 
punishment for crimes committed by a native on an 
Englishman, a far greater degree of equity could be 
administered to the New Zealander than has been 
administered to the Australian, inasmuch as the New 
Zealander could not be punished by British law until 
he had submitted himself to British sovereignty, and 
might be tried by a jury in part composed of his own 
countrymen, whereas the Australians are tried wholly 
by strangers, whose sovereignty they have never 
acknowledged, for crimes committed on strangers, 
whom the law of nations allows them to consider as 
invaders of their shores, and spoilers of their pos- 
sessions. 

§ Amalgamation. 

I have hitherto spoken of measures to be taken 
with reference to the circumstances of the natives of 
New Zealand, while they continue in what may be 
called the infancy of their social existence. But it 
is right that we should throw our regards into futurity, 
and consider what is likely to be their condition after 
a lapse of time. 



94 



We can hardly expect that at any future period 
the country will be inhabited by two races equally 
civilized and happy, and enjoying the same social and 
political privileges, but perfectly distinct from each 
other in blood and complexion. We may support the 
natives in a position of advantage for some years to 
come, and justice and sound policy require that we 
should ; but if we wish to see the country inhabited 
by a powerful, happy, and well-ordered people, we 
must look forward to the amalgamation of the two 
races into one. 

Upon the expediency and feasibility of this course 
I shall not dw T ell, as I believe you are all quite sen- 
sible of it ; and there is an uniformly concurring tes- 
timony that the New Zealanders possess those mental 
and physical qualities which would qualify them for 
matrimonial alliance with Europeans, and give the 
hope of a fine and intelligent progeny. All I wish 
is to suggest some steps which I think might be taken 
with reference to this prospect. 

It is very likely that when you arrive in New 
Zealand, you will already find some alliances to have 
taken place between the previous settlers and the 
native females. In some instances it is possible that 
these alliances may have been sanctioned by the mar- 
riage ceremonv, but in others it is too probable that 
the parties will be living in concubinage. 

Of course you will treat these different cases in a 
different way. It is extremely important that both 
the natives and the previous settlers should feel that 
you regard no connexion with approbation but such as 
amounts to lawful wedlock ; and that it is your first 
wish, respecting all such connexions, that they should 
as speedily as possible be invested with a legitimate 
character. 

But it would be hardly possible, and I question 
whether it would be right, to make any difference in 



95 



your treatment of the offspring of such alliances. It 
would be very unwise to connect any feeling of dis- 
grace with the mixed blood. Children of such com- 
plexion must be regarded with the greatest interest, 
and cultivated with the greatest care, as being in some 
degree the representatives of what we must expect 
the whole New Zealand people at some period to 
become. However essential, therefore, it may be to 
discountenance illicit connexions between English- 
men and native females, as being calculated beyond 
all other things, to degrade the native race and coun- 
teract your plans for their improvement, — it would 
be very unwise at the present stage of things to visit 
the crime of the father upon the child by attaching 
manifest disgrace to such illegitimacy. As far, there- 
fore, as circumstances allow, these children, of what- 
ever parentage, should be educated with the greatest 
care, and every pains taken to develop and regulate 
their moral and intellectual qualities. They must be 
considered as very remarkable and interesting speci- 
mens of the human family, and would no doubt afford 
you a most important field for moral culture. It is 
worthy of notice, that the two coloured men, Frazer 
and Peter Jones, who have from time to time excited 
attention in England by their sermons and speeches, 
are both of mixed blood, and this would seem to 
indicate that the best instances of intellectual and 
moral developement must be sought, not in the purely 
coloured race, but in the race that results from amal- 
gamation. 

It cannot be denied that the half-cast race in the 
various quarters of the world is often distinguished by 
very bad qualities, such as low cunning, violent pas- 
sions, and immorality. And this has led hasty rea- 
soners to declaim at large against the principle of 
amalgamation. But there can be little doubt that 
such bad qualities would be sufficiently accounted for 



96 



by the worthless character of the parentage, the dis- 
grace attached to the condition, and the utter absence 
of moral training, or rather the entire abandonment 
to the worst possible influences, which would doubtless 
be observable in all such cases. If the ordinance of 
Holy Matrimony be set aside, and give place to a self- 
ish and unholy indulgence of the passions; and if the 
offspring of such connexions be handed down even by 
the criminal author of their being to contempt and 
crime; we may well expect them to become a deformity 
to their species, and a bye-word against the principle 
of amalgamation. 

But if we reverse the picture, — if we suppose these 
alliances to result from a sensible persuasion that it 
is not good for man to be alone — to be viewed with 
a generous superiority to the prejudices of colour, and 
to be accompanied by those sentiments of personal 
regard, and those hopes for futurity which are the 
cementers and supports of matrimonial happiness in 
Christian countries, — and if we suppose that the off- 
spring of such marriages become objects of jealous care 
not only to their parents, but to the whole community 
of which they form a part, it would be a libel upon 
God's dealings with his intelligent creatures to pre- 
sume that such children would be less susceptible of 
moral influence than the children of unmixed blood, 
whether light or coloured. 

This leads me to urge the absolute importance of 
surrounding these connexions by all that can make 
marriage most honoured and most respected, and of 
promoting the most rigid morality in the intercourse 
between the colonists and the natives. 

I hope I may be expressing the conviction of every 
one among you, when I say that there is nothing 
which, as individuals, and as the germ of a future 
community, you ought so vigilantly and religiously 
to guard against, as the slightest approach to laxity of 



97 



principle in this direction. Nor is there a subject on 
which it more behoves you to implore the succour of 
Divine grace in order that you may be " blameless and 
without offence. v> 

There could not be a more certain portent of every 
social and civil calamity, of the utter failure of all 
your plans, and the shame and confusion of those 
who have looked forward to the colonization of New 
Zealand as an instrument of good, than for the Bri- 
tish colonists to seek the gratification of their pas- 
sions in the corruption and dishonour of the native 
race; while nothing would more contribute to the 
rapid improvement and elevation of the natives, and 
your own comfort and respectability, than to extend 
and refine their notions upon the subject of female 
virtue. I earnestly hope and pray that in this par- 
ticular the first British colony of New Zealand may 
afford a striking contrast to the past crimes of colo- 
nization, to the conduct of the lawless settlers in New 
Zealand, and to the laxity of morals which is said to 
prevail in the neighbouring colony of New South 
Wales. And in this hope I am encouraged by the 
wise precautions which have been taken by the 
Directors of the New Zealand Company and the 
colonists, and by the happy examples of matrimonial 
comfort and respectability which you possess among 
yourselves, and from the means of moral and religious 
culture which you have carried out with you. 

If any are disposed to smile at the idea of an 
amalgamation between the New Zealanders and the 
British, we may refer to the precedent of the marriage 
of Mr. Rolfe with Pocahuntas in the early times of 
American colonization, and the remarkable fact that 
many of the best families in Virginia are proud to 
trace their origin to such a source. Unhappily the 
example set by Mr. Rolfe was not followed. It was 
the custom and perhaps the policy of the age to regard 

H 



98 



the aboriginal races with contempt, and to rejoice at 
anything which gave a plausible pretext for their 
destruction. A better tone of mind prevails at the 
present moment ; and the best proof that there is no 
natural repugnance to the contraction of marriages 
between the natives and the British, is to be found in 
the number of children of the half-blood already born 
in New Zealand. 

The first step towards the promotion of marriages 
between the two races will be what I have already 
indicated, viz., the legal ratification of all such con- 
nexions actually existing in New Zealand, but which 
from indifference, bad example, or the absence of 
means have never assumed the matrimonial charac- 
ter. No doubt, while the natives are under the in- 
fluence of missionaries, and the native female has 
been baptized, a marriage according to the rites of the 
Church would have been performed ; and certainly 
where the female remains a heathen, she is not in a 
condition to participate in the performance of such a 
ceremony. But the difficulty which is here presented 
may, I think, be fairly got over by the permission 
given to us by the law to make marriage a purely civil 
contract ; and however we might desire to invest it 
with a religious character, it is certainly no mean 
step in a progress towards civilization and good order, 
" dare jura maritis." to surround the marriage rite 
with those legal sanctions which have received the 
common consent of all civilized nations. 

How far in any individual case, we ought to give 
our countenance to a contemplated marriage between 
a Christian and a New Zealand er persisting in hea- 
thenism, is a very different question. Nothing I con- 
ceive but the necessity of preventing an illicit con- 
nexion could warrant us in advising such a measure. 
But such a case of conscience is not likely to arise, as 
from the strong disposition which prevails among the 



99 



New Zealanders to accept Christianity, it is more than 
probable that no conscientious Briton would be likely 
to wish to marry a New Zealander who was not at 
least a catechumen ; while for those with whom the 
question should lie between marriage and a connexion 
unsanctioned by marriage, there can be no question 
that a merely civil contract would be better than no 
contract at all. 

To marriage, unexceptionable in every point of 
view, every encouragement should be given. If by 
any means marriage portions could be given with a 
native female, it would be w T ell ; and if the plan for 
enriching the families of the native chiefs should prove 
successful, (and its success will depend on the general 
success of the colony,) the daughters of the native 
chiefs will be among the most richly endowed heiresses 
of the country. 

Nor should we neglect other means for encouraging 
such alliances. The natives who form them should 
feel that they are entering into a new family of 
countrymen and countrywomen ; and their marriages 
should not only be celebrated with religious solemnity, 
but be made occasions of picturesque interest and 
innocent rejoicing. All men are powerfully influ- 
enced by ceremonies, and this taste is, no doubt, one 
of the intended means for promoting order and system 
throughout mankind : those who are affected with 
morbid hyper-civilization, think they can dispense 
with them ; but it is a happy thing that this taste 
exists strongly among the infant races of the world, 
and it may, no doubt, be made an important instru- 
ment in their social culture. 

§ Language. 

Among the other matters of interest in New Zea- 
land, we must reckon its future language. There can 

H2 



100 



be no doubt, that in order to its rapid advancement 
and civilization, we must hope that the English lan- 
guage will become universal throughout the country. 
In aiming at this object, however, we must be as 
careful for the interests of the natives as in all our 
other purposes, and we shall find, as in everything 
else, that policy and humanity will dictate the same 
course. 

There is a society which has for its object to dis- 
seminate the Scriptures in the native Irish, and by its 
means much colloquial intercourse takes place in the 
Irish language, between its agents and the native 
inhabitants. The consequence is, that the English 
language is now rapidly spreading in places where 
before it was not understood. The habit of reading, 
the cultivation of mind, and the enlargement of ideas, 
consequent upon the intercourse of the natives in their 
own language, w T ith the agents of the society, has led 
the people to a still further developement of their 
faculties in the acquirement of English ; where the 
opposite course, of refusing to speak to them in any 
language but English, effectually debarred them from 
the possibility of acquiring it. 

Another reason for acquiring the New Zealand 
language is, that you may become acquainted with 
their thoughts. For unless you know the mind and 
genius of the people, you cannot frame laws and insti- 
tutions for them ; and unless they have laws to suit 
them they must perish. One of the first steps towards 
civilization and legislation, in New Zealand, would 
manifestly be to learn their language, — to examine it 
critically, to see what resources it possesses, — how far 
it is calculated for expressing the complicated pro- 
cesses of human thought, and of what changes for the 
better it is susceptible. It would also be desirable to 
collect, and reduce into writing, any rude poems or 
songs, and popular legendary tales or traditions, they 



101 



may have among them, as well as any common sayings 
of a proverbial or ethical character. 

It is extremely probable that the dialect spoken 
by the common class of British settlers is as remote 
from the perfection of the New Zealand language, as 
their English would be an unfair representation of the 
language of well-educated Englishmen ; and it will be 
a question for future investigation, how far the terms 
into which the New Zealand missionaries have trans- 
lated portions of the Scriptures, and the Liturgy, are 
those into which men of learning and philosophy 
would have moulded the language of New Zealand, to 
express the same ideas. Care should be taken to avoid 
words and expressions formed upon base and vulgar 
analogies, as well as everything which, to the New 
Zealand ear, must present the character of jargon ; 
and the latter must, I conceive, be the case where an 
European word is made use of to express an European 
idea. It appears to me that, by following the analo- 
gies of the Greek or German languages, in their mode 
of deriving and compounding words to express new 
ideas, there is no important idea for which a word 
might not be legitimately formed from New Zealand 
roots. I am led to make this observation from the 
number of words of manifest English derivation which 
I see in the translations above referred to. 

The Bishop of Australia, when in New Zealand, 
inquired very closely into this subject, and it is satis- 
factory to hear him say, with reference to the adoption 
of particular words and phrases by the translator*, " I 
was gratified to find that he was invariably prepared 
with a reason ; and my impression is, that where there 
were conflicting reasons, each carrying weight, he had 
generally given the preference to that which deserved 
it." The Bishop, however, acknowledges that his 



* Mr. W. Williams. 



102 



acquaintance with the language was not sufficient to 
enable him to judge critically of its fidelity to the 
original. Nor can it be supposed that any one could 
become thoroughly acquainted with its resources ex- 
cept by a great deal of intercourse among the people, 
accompanied by a clear insight into the metaphysics 
of language in general. 

§ Religion. 

In many of the foregoing pages I have given my 
opinion with the utmost freedom as to the defects 
which I think observable in the course adopted by the 
missionaries for the improvement and benefit of the 
native tribes. They appear to me to have had no 
adequate notions either of the magnitude or of the 
minute difficulties and delicate character of the work 
they were undertaking in attempting to form an un- 
cultivated people into the germ of a future nation. 
They appear also to evince the very common incapa- 
city of establishing a fair adjustment of the relative 
rights and duties of savage and civilized men when 
brought into a common field of action. 

But if we turn from the secular part of their pro- 
ceedings to the religious effect of their labours, we have 
ample reason for gratitude. The fruits of their in- 
structions, whether we regard the spiritual change 
which has been wrought in some, or the great moral 
change which is almost universal, have been indeed 
surprising, and give ample evidence that their mini- 
stry has been attended with the Divine blessing, and 
has paved the way for those ulterior measures of im- 
provement which will now be brought to bear upon 
the natives. Nor can it be doubted that a continuance 
of the same and similar instructions will be absolutely 
essential as a guard against the spiritual danger of 
those ulterior measures, conducted, as they must be, 
with a chief reference to the things of this life. 



103 



Can there be a greater proof of the miraculous 
effect of Christian teaching in reclaiming and enno- 
bling the mind of the savage, — while it exhibits in 
the most odious colours the brutality and insolence of 
our own countrymen, and gives an instance of that 
kind of dealing with the old masters of the soil, which 
I trust will receive a sudden and surprising check by 
the establishment of British authority,— than is con- 
tained in the following incident : — 

A few days ago, one of the carpenters, engaged to build the 
new church, employed a native to dig his garden. When he 
had done his work, he went into the carpenter's shop, to talk 
with him about his payment. The other carpenter, a cross, 
surly tempered man, said to the native, " Get you out of the 
shop; we want none of you fellows here!" The native re- 
plied, " Don't be angry : I am come to talk with Benjamin." 
The fellow said, " I shall be angry ;" and, after a few words, 
began to ill-use the native in a most barbarous manner ; kick- 
ing him in the side, because he would not get up. The native 
made no resistance till the man left off ; when he jumped up, 
took the fellow by the throat, held him with one hand as a 
man would a child, and drew out a plane-iron tied on the top 
of a stick so as to form a little adze. " Now," said the native, 
while he held it over his head, " you see your life is in my 
hand : you owe your life to the preaching of the gospel : you 
see my arm is quite strong enough to kill you, and my arm is 
willing ; but my heart is not, because I have heard the mis- 
sionaries preach the gospel. If my heart were as dark as it 
was before I heard them preach, I should strike off your 
head." He did not return the blows, but made him pay a 
blanket for the insult. — Church Missionary Record, p. 282. 

Nor do we want evidence of still higher effects of 
the power of religion. The dying moments of the 
New Zealander have often been accompanied by a 
sense of guilt removed, and an assurance of eternal 
life, which have amply repaid both the missionaries 
and the religious public at home for the trouble and 
expense which has been incurred in promoting their 
conversion. 



104 



There is much that is deeply affecting in the 
results of Christianity on the mind of an uncultivated 
or infant people. Their ready reception of its truths 
seems to verify the words of our Lord, " I thank thee, 
O Father, lord of heaven and earth, because thou 
hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and 
hast revealed them unto babes." Such were the Ga- 
latians when Paul preached to them, and when they 
received him as an angel of God, and would, if it had 
been possible, have plucked out their eyes, and have 
given them to him. Such too, we may indulge the 
belief, was the effect produced upon our own ances- 
tors by the first preaching of Christianity. In some 
particulars the religion of the converted New Zea- 
landers may be very defective, especially in those points 
which require the exercise of a well-practised under- 
standing ; but in many respects, no doubt, it might 
put to the blush the Christianity of much more civi- 
lized countries. May God forbid that they should see 
anything in the general religious tone of the first 
British colony in New Zealand, which will tend to 
deaden their religious feelings, to make their devotion 
less fervent, or to blunt their conscience ! 

Every Christian must rejoice that the colony went 
out with the expressed intention of acting in a mis- 
sionary character ; but something more than inten- 
tion is required for the performance of such a work. 
Enlightened self-interest must point out to you the 
great advantage you would gain by forming the natives 
into a well-ordered community. But self-interest 
will never teach the course or prompt the efforts that 
are necessary in order to change the heart of a hea- 
then. " This kind," said our Lord, on one occasion, 
" goeth not out but by prayer and fasting." And you, 
too, will find that nothing but a sincere and self- 
denying zeal in the cause of religion, a zeal founded 
on strong faith and actuated by the Divine spirit, will 



105 



give you any success as a missionary colony. It is 
my most earnest prayer, therefore, both on your own 
account, and for the sake of the natives, that the 
power of religion may be made manifest among the 
colonists themselves. 

To this end the means of grace are necessary, 
and it is another subject for gratitude, that, from the 
moment of your arrival at your destination, you will 
possess these means in greater abundance than any 
infant colony that ever left Great Britain. But I 
trust that something more is in prospect. To the 
order and completeness of the Church of England, — 
adhering in this respect to the universal practice of 
the Church Catholic from the earliest times, — it is 
necessary that each community of her members should 
be under the superintendence of a bishop ; and where- 
ever she exists without a bishop, her organization is 
defective in its most important part, namely, in that 
which presides over and regulates the whole. I am 
happy to say that there is at this moment in England 
an active and increasing desire to give to the Church 
in the colonies this important element of completeness 
and perfection, and that diligent efforts are now 
making, under the sanction of the highest ecclesias- 
tical authority, to provide the means for appointing 
a bishop to oversee the flocks of Christ in the southern 
part of the northern island of New Zealand. May 
God vouchsafe his blessing on these exertions, and 
make them abundantly effectual in the promotion of 
his glory and the welfare of immortal souls. 

In the mean time it is of the utmost consequence 
that the best feeling should be kept up between you 
and those important religious bodies which now exist 
in New Zealand. It should ever be remembered that, 
when that country was in its most savage state, they 
went there for the single purpose of converting its 
natives to Christianity, and that it is mainly owing to 



106 



their labours that you are now able to establish your- 
selves in safety upon its shores. Nor can there be the 
slightest doubt of the purity of intention and devout 
Christian feeling of the superintending societies at 
home, or that their opposition to the measures for 
colonizing New Zealand was dictated by an anxious 
solicitude for the good of those whom they considered 
as their spiritual charge. On you the eyes of those 
societies are at this moment fixed, and it is still anti- 
cipated by many of their members that your settle- 
ment in the country will be a formidable impediment 
to the success of their missions, and a source of griev- 
ous injury to the natives. But if such fears are now 
entertained, as it is natural to suppose, I trust that 
ere long you will be known and justified by your 
fruits. It is also most earnestly to be desired that 
there should be a perfect understanding between you 
and their agents in New Zealand, and that you 
should heartily co-operate together in the great religi- 
ous and philanthropic purposes which both of you 
desire to promote. 

With regard to the reports which have been spread 
in this country to the disadvantage of the missionaries 
on the ground of the large purchases of land which 
they have made from the natives, I can only say that 
I hope everything respecting it will be cleared up to 
the satisfaction of every impartial observer. There 
was much to induce the missionaries to make such 
purchases at the time when they were made : and it 
yet remains to be seen how they will be disposed of. 
I earnestly hope that they will at least see it to be no 
less for their interest than an act of justice to make 
reserves for the natives out of the still uncultivated 
parts of such purchases, to the same extent, and on 
the same principle, as those which have been made 
for them out of the lands purchased by the New Zea- 
land Company. It never could have been the inten- 



i 



107 

tion of the missionaries to raise the fortunes of their 
families on the ruins of the native race : and it is still 
in their power to contribute their influence to esta- 
blish, as a general rule, that one-tenth portion of the 
whole territory of New Zealand, — to be determined 
by lot out of such portion of the soil as still remains 
uncultivated, and to share, therefore, equally with the 
rest of the land in the gradual improvement in value, 
which it will all acquire as a consequence of its colo- 
nization, — shall be the perpetual and indefeasible pos- 
session of the original proprietors of the soil. 

May God, in his mercy, grant that the period of 
evil reports, suspicions, and recriminations, may be 
drawing to a close, and that the time may be ap- 
proaching when men will understand each other 
better, and give each other credit for the same honesty 
of purpose by which they are actuated themselves! 
There certainly never was a time when so universal 
an interest was expressed about the future circum- 
stances of any savage people, as is now expressed 
about the New Zealanders. And if as yet we have 
never witnessed the perfect civilization of an abori- 
ginal race, it should impress us w T ith a deep sense of 
the difficulties of our undertaking, but should not 
lead us to despair. Much thought, — much mutual 
forbearance, — a free communication of ideas, — an 
impartial investigation of all suggestions, — and, above 
all, an humble application to the throne of Grace for 
that assistance, without which all our efforts must 
be vain, — may, at least, be expected from every Chris- 
tian, and every lover of his fellow-creatures who is 
now engaged in the exciting and most important 
work of planting the first British colony in New 
Zealand. Nor do I think that we should presume 
too much, were we to anticipate that such a course, 
accompanied by corresponding activity and persever- 
ance, would be successful. 



108 



POSTSCRIPT. 



In a work written at various intervals during the 
course of a twelvemonth, upon a subject about which 
information is continually arriving, news may be 
received, even at the last moment, which makes it 
necessary to recall attention to some of its former 
statements. Such is the case in the present instance. 
In a very interesting letter, containing throughout 
matter highly creditable to the natives, written by a 
passenger on board the Cuba, and dated Kawia, New 
Zealand, 14th of February, 1840, I read the following 
passage : — 

In consequence, too, of the willingness of the natives to 
work for a reasonable price, labour has hitherto been abundant 
and cheap. There is plenty of work for all who are willing 
to work, but the labourers do not obtain exorbitant wages. 
This is equally advantageous to the labourer and the capitalist ; 
because when an uneducated man finds himself on a sudden 
able to command by two days' work enough for a weeFs sub- 
sistence, the novel position in which he is placed tends ordi- 
narily to generate habits of idleness and improvidence, and he 
is a poorer instead of a richer man, from the very facility with 
which he obtains money 

I could scarcely have had a stronger confirmation 
of the importance of what I have said in former parts 
of this address, or a more striking proof of the extreme 
delicacy of the question which regards the mutual 
rights and obligations of savages and civilized men, 
when brought into relation with each other. 

Nothing can possibly be more frank, truthful, and 
benevolent, than the spirit which breathes throughout 
the whole of this letter. But its writer appears to 



109 



me to be caught by the same fallacy, into which all 
the previous settlers in New Zealand, not excepting 
the missionaries themselves, have been betrayed re- 
specting the wages that New Zealanders ought to 
receive. 

It may clearly be inferred from the above passage 
that if the native labourers had been paid, as in equity 
they might, they wouldh&ve been able to command by 
two days' work enough for a week's subsistence, and 
that they were paid no more than enough for a week's 
subsistence for their whole week's work ; so that they 
received at most not more than one third of what an 
English labourer might have demanded, and an English 
capitalist would have been willing to pay for the same 
amount of work ; and this certainly is better than their 
receiving only a tithe of their due, as at Hokianga and 
Wairnate. But can that by any possibility be right in 
New Zealand which would be wrong in England ? 
With what countenance may we suppose that an intel- 
ligent young journeyman shoemaker would listen to his 
employer, were he to address him in the following 
terms, when he came on the Saturday night to receive 
his week's wages : — 

" John, you have given me great satisfaction, I 
have no fault to find with you : your work is of a 
superior order — indeed, I may say that you are a first- 
rate hand. All this, you may be sure, makes me 
take a great interest in your welfare, and the better 
to insure it, I have hit upon a plan which will be 
; equally advantageous' to you and me. The sum that 
is due to you for your week's work, at the common 
rate of journeyman's wages, is 11. 2s. 6d. My inten- 
tention, however, is only to give you 7s. bd., and 
reserve 15s. for myself. Your advantage in this is, 
that you will have just enough for your week's sub- 
sistence, and no more. I need not tell you that 
journeymen shoemakers, especially the first-rate hands, 



no 



are proverbially idle and improvident. I could men- 
tion a dozen instances of men who have reduced 
themselves to rags, and been the torment of their 
master and his customers, just because they could 
earn their 5s. any day in the week. This may be the 
case with you, and I wish to secure you against such 
a misfortune, by giving you no more than you require 
for your daily maintenance. By these means, I shall 
always have you at hand, and you will be always 
sober, and actively employed. This, however, will 
not be the only advantage to me in the little arrange- 
ment that I propose : I am a capitalist, and I wish 
to increase my capital; and although 15s. is a trifle 
to what I have at my banker's, you know that every 
little helps. Here, therefore, are your three half- 
crowns : the 15s. I shall place to my own account at 
Messrs. Barclay and Tritton's." 

Might we not supppose that the young journey- 
man would reply in some such terms as the fol- 
lowing : — 

" I am very proud, sir, of the kind interest that you 
take in my welfare, and I sought your service because 
I knew that you were a good master and liked to be 
served by good men. But if, as you say, I have earned 
one pound two and sixpence, I had rather, if you 
please, have the whole of it myself. I know that 
many journeymen have made a bad use of good wages, 
but that is no reason why I should not have what 
belongs to me. It is very true I shall not want more 
than seven shillings and sixpence to keep me for the 
week ; but I shall not always be as I am now ; — I 
hope one day to marry and have a family and workmen 
of my own. And, if not, there is such a thing as a 
rainy day ; I may live to be an old man and past my 
work, or I may be laid up by sickness. I do not care 
to finger the money now, but I should like to have it 
when I want it. You have said that you have money 



Ill 



at your banker's; but you know, sir, there are banks 
for the poor as well as the rich, and, if it was the 
same to you, I had rather you would place the money 
to my account at the Savings 1 Bank, than to yours at 
Messrs. Barclay and Trittons." 

What could we expect after this, but that the 
master shoemaker, whom we have all along supposed 
to be a man of worth and benevolence, would smile 
on his good-tempered and intelligent journeyman, 
pleased with the success of his scheme for teaching 
him the value of money, and giving him an extra 
half-crown for his civility, would place his fifteen 
shillings for him in the Savings' Bank ? 

May I not add the closing words of the Saviour in 
the beautiful parable, wherein we are taught our duty 
to our neighbour, and say, — " Go thou and do like- 
wise." 

It is a matter of the greatest importance that 
we should have a clear and distinct idea of the prin- 
ciples on which we proceed in dealing with savages, 
if such they must be called. There is something in 
their particular case which leads us to feel that we 
ought not to adopt precisely the same principles in 
dealing with them that we should in dealing with our 
own countrymen ; but this, which is a correct im- 
pression, may lead us to wrong practical conclusions. 
In the case of wages, for instance, we fancy because 
they can easily support themselves, that we may be 
satisfied to pay them a third or a tithe of what we 
should have to pay our own countrymen under similar 
circumstances. 

I allow that if we could call them up like 
u spirits from the vasty deep " to do our bidding and 
then disappear, or if they were like those ghostly 
drudges who are said to haunt the kitchens and 
dairies of the Irish farmer for purposes of domestic 
utility; or if they possessed another New Zealand 



112 



floating in the air like Gulliver's Laputa, and after 
toiling for the foreigner on humbler clay could mount 
up to a home of freedom and plenty in a region inac- 
cessible to British enterprise : — in any of these cases 
we might fairly allow them to amuse themselves by 
doing our work for " a brightened half-penny or 
any other insignificant consideration, without troubling 
ourselves to consider whether they would thereby do 
themselves any harm. 

But since they are our fellow-men, and we have 
determined to make them our fellow-citizens, we 
should bear in mind that a process is begun and is 
now rapidly going forward, by which their circum- 
stances must be altered to an extent that we cannot 
appreciate : they are rapidly losing all the peculiar 
advantages and immunities of savage life, and if we 
do not give them every benefit which they become 
entitled to on account of their approach towards 
civilization, what can we expect but a repetition of 
the same sad story of rotten maize, epidemics, glan- 
dular swellings, and extinction of native life, which 
has already excited our commiseration ? 

There certainly is an instinctive feeling that it 
would be unwise and injurious to pursue precisely the 
same course in dealing with savages which we should 
in dealing with our own countrymen; and this instinc- 
tive feeling is a perfectly just and correct one, and has 
prompted the well-wishers of New Zealand in their 
desire for exceptional laws in favour of its native 
inhabitants. But, — if we grant that some departure 
should be made from the principles of dealing which 
we adopt towards our countrymen, — for the sake of all 
that is righteous let it not be a departure in the 

WRONG DIRECTION ! 

A short time ago I was called on by a decent- 
* See the story of the kangaroo hunt in Leigh's South Australia, 



113 



looking sea-faring man, with a somewhat dejected 
countenance. His object was to raise subscriptions to 
replace a small cutter, on which he and his father had 
depended for the support of their families, but which 
had recently gone clown off Lymington. The story 
was this : — The cutter was returning from Poole, 
laden with various articles of traffic. The crew con- 
sisted of the man, his father, and a boy. It was a 
dark evening, in the early part of the year, and there 
was a light breeze from the east, when suddenly they 
became aware of a large vessel which was close by 
and coming towards them. A loud cry of " Star- 
board," instantly issued from the little cutter, and 
almost as instantly larboard went the helm of the 
great vessel, — her prow came heavily against the side 
of the cutter, — she returned to her former course, 
and sailed on towards the west. 

" Starboard," we cried, Sir, " and larboard they 
put the helm, and stove in our side. I saw directly 
that she was beginning to fill, and I called to my 
father to get ready the small boat, for we were going 
down, and we had scarcely got into the boat and 
pulled a couple of strokes aw^ay from the cutter, when 
she went down, and the water made a whirl, and 
went down after her." 

" But, said I, could you not make the owners of the 
ship replace your little vessel?" 44 Yes, sir, we could 
if we could get hold of them, but they sailed right 
away to the west the moment they'd touched us, 
because they knew they'd have had to pay, and we 
never heard of them afterwards ; — only when they'd 
got some hundred yards to leeward ; — and then they 
cried out, 4 We hope, my lads, we hav'nt hurt 

you/" 

This little incident may convey a word in season 
to the New Zealand Colonists : had the vessel gone 



114 

straight she might have grazed the cutter : had the 
helm been put starboard she would have avoided her,; 
but as it was put larboard she went in to her and 
sunk her. 

We grant that you must adopt new principles in 
paying wages to the natives. We grant that it 
might be dangerous to place immediately in their 
power the same amount of remuneration that you 
would give to an Englishman ; they might squan- 
der it and injure themselves with it in a thousand 
ways. But it will be still more certainly destructive 
to them to put nine -tenths, or even two-thirds of it 
into your own pockets. If you do. we must expect 
the little vessel of the fortunes of New Zealand to 
sink and disappear, even before its mariners have 
taken to their boat, or heard your farewell cheer, 
4 ' We hope, my lads, we hav'nt hurt you." 

The way to put the helm starboard is to establish 
Savings" Banks, and to deposit therein, for the benefit 
of the native labourers, every farthing that you would 
be obliged to pay to British labourers for doing the 
same work, except what they may require for their 
present necessities, and let all these matters be con- 
ducted so openly that every one may know the amount 
of justice you are measuring out to them, and be 
obliged to treat them in the same way. And let 
them be made to understand themselves what you are 
doing for them ; and this practical proof, both of your 
goodness, and of the value of civilized institutions, will 
have more efTect in forming their minds and inspiring 
them with confidence, than years of ordinary education 
without it. 

No possible harm can ever arise from an exact 
knowledge of the true state of the case, and I would 
therefore give it as my last recommendation, that 
accurate statistical tables may be made of the renin- 



115 



neration, either in money, provisions, or commodities, 
which is actually paid to the natives for their labour, 
together with the exact market price, in money, of 
all those articles which are in common use among 
them. 

Indeed it is hardly possible to avoid injustice of 
some kind or other, unless payments in money are 
universally established, both for native labour and all 
articles of native produce, together with fixed money 
prices for everything the natives may desire to obtain 
from the settlers. For as long as hard labour and 
solid provisions are paid for in tobacco and blankets, 
it is ten to one but the natives will be willing to 
receive less tobacco and fewer blankets than a Euro- 
pean would feel entitled to demand, and a colonist 
would be satisfied to pay. 

The settler who avails himself of his superior 
knowledge to obtain from the native more provisions 
or more labour than he could obtain from a European 
for the same consideration, does an act of injustice, 
which tends, so far as it goes, to the diminution of 
native prosperity, and the degradation and destruction 
of the native race. But as long as there is a possi- 
bility of such transactions there will be some to 
perform them. The surest way to prevent their 
occurrence is to establish not only a uniform price for 
labour, whether performed by native or European, 
but also a uniform price for every article of traffic, 
whether bought or sold by native or European ; and 
to make it a punishable act of roguery to sell anything 
to a native at a higher price, or to purchase anything 
from a native at a lower price, than would be 
demanded from or paid by a European for the same 
article. 



I 2 



APPENDIX. 



9 



THOUGHTS 

ON 

THE FORMATION OF A CONSTITUTION 

FOR 

NEW ZEALAND. 



In reflecting upon the present state and future 
prospects of New Zealand, the mind is naturally dis- 
posed to speculate upon the form of constitution which 
it would be most desirable to establish on its shores. 
For we cannot but believe, that from its situation and 
physical advantages it is destined to become, in the 
course of time, a position of political importance 
scarcely inferior to that which is occupied by Great 
Britain herself, and that this is the time when mea- 
sures should be taken to form the social and political 
character of its future people. 

Now it must be acknowledged that, heretofore, 
England has not been happy in her measures of colo- 
nization. The present circumstances and relative 
position of the whole Anglo-Saxon population of the 
New World, are far from being such as to permit her 
to congratulate herself on the wisdom she has hitherto 
displayed in laying the foundation of future states 
and empires. And whatever direction may yet be 
given to Australian colonization, we must confess, 
with shame, that it began by the plantation of 
crime. 

But there is some reason to hope that the dawn 
of a brighter period is approaching. For many valu- 



120 



able suggestions, and for much indefatigable labour in 
the cause of colonization, we are greatly indebted to 
Sir Robert Wilmot Horton, and we are no less in- 
debted to Mr. Edward Gibbon Wakefield, for the 
discovery and unwearied advocacy of a mode of dis- 
posing of waste lands in the colonies which is now 
extensively adopted, and which must have the greatest 
possible influence on the whole future course of colo- 
nization. The subject is beginning to be considered 
under new aspects, and to be regarded with interest in 
quarters where formerly it excited no attention. And 
it augurs well, and is worthy of remark, that persons 
whose general views and particular predilections are 
at the utmost possible distance from each other, 
agree in the admission of one great principle with 
respect to it, namely, that the future colony should be 
in its form and constituent elements a counterpart of 
the mother country. 

The advocates of the Wakefield system of colo- 
nization have always urged as its greatest recommend- 
ation, that it affords an unexampled facility for carry- 
ing out to the new country, not individuals alone, but 
an integral portion of society as it exists in England ; 
while the importance of this principle is distinctly 
recognised by their most decided political opponents. 
In proof of which, I need only refer to the sentiments 
expressed by Sir Robert Inglis, who, on more than one 
occasion, has quoted the famous saying of the Duke 
of Wellington, that for a great nation like England, 
there can be no such thing as a little war, and has 
applied it to colonization, saying, that there should 
be no such thing as a small project of colonization, 
and that every colony ought to be a miniature repre- 
sentation of the British empire. 

Under the sanction of this remarkable coincidence 
of opinion in two very different quarters, it may per- 
haps be permitted me to set down some reflections 



121 



which were not unlikely to have occurred to me, 
while speculating on the course which it would be 
reasonable to pursue in order fully to carry out this 
idea in the particular case of New Zealand, and at 
the same time, to make the sovereignty of Great 
Britain perfectly consistent with the preservation and 
consolidation of every civil right which we can 
suppose to exist in the present lords of that country. 

I shall state at once, and embody in three propo- 
sitions the chief features of the course which has 
occurred to me, as best calculated to effect such a pur- 
pose, and I shall afterwards enter with more detail 
into its defence and general illustration. 

The propositions are these : — 

First. That New Zealand should be governed by 
a lord-lieutenant appointed by the crown of England, 
and have a parliament of its own. 

Secondly. That to this end it should be the 
immediate care of Great Britain to provide for the 
establishment and perpetual maintenance of a senate, 
or superior house of legislature for the new country. 

Thirdly. That this senate, or superior house of 
legislature, should consist partly of Englishmen of 
large landed property in New Zealand, to be appointed 
for that purpose by the British crown, and partly of 
the Native Chiefs of New Zealand, and that the mem- 
bers of this senate should have titles of honour, and 
constitute an hereditary peerage as in England. 

I would only add that such being the great frame 
work of the body politic, it would be easy to make 
provision for the timely representation in the legisla- 
ture of those specific popular interests, which would 
be evolved in the natural progress of the colony. 

Upon the above propositions I submit the follow- 
ing remarks : — 

To the proposed representative of the British 
crown, I give the title of Lord-lieutenant, as indi- 



122 



eating the high rank of the individual whom it would 
be desirable to see at the head of affairs in New 
Zealand, and as establishing a closer analogy with the 
state of things in our own country. 

By the term Senate, or superior house of legisla- 
ture, it is intended to designate that portion of the 
body politic, whose natural province, according to its 
primary intention, is to deliberate on state affairs; 
and whose usual office, in a constitution fully developed, 
is " by its tranquil and safe, but effective working to 
act as an useful check on the popular branch of the 
legislature*." It appears under its first character as 
the Wittenagemot of our Saxon ancestors, and the 
parliament of the early Norman kings, and under its 
second as the modern House of Lords. 

As a reason for proposing the establishment of a 
senate in New Zealand, it may be enough to say that 
no national community is complete without one. Its 
importance as a deliberative body, and as the repre- 
sentative of a large class of most important interests 
is amply borne out by the whole course of past testi- 
mony and experience. Every one admits that as a 
balancing power, it is absolutely essential to the safety 
and permanence of a limited monarchy. Nor can it 
be dispensed with in a republic. For it is asserted 
as an axiom by a great republican writer, that " the 
necessary definition of a commonwealth, anything well 
ordered is that it is a government consisting of the 
senate proposing, the people resolving, and the magis- 
tracy executing •j - ." 

But if it be granted that a senate is indispensable 
to the completeness and good order of a state, I think 
it will readily be allowed that it is that portion of the 
community which ought, in order of time, to be the 
first embodied and invested with specific functions. 

* Report on the affairs of British North America. 
•f Harrington. 



123 



The work to be first done in a newly settled country, 
is that which naturally falls under the province of a 
senate, the presumable qualifications of which are 
deliberative wisdom, prudence, forethought, experi- 
ence, and theoretical knowledge of legislation. Indeed 
the interests of the several classes of a young commu- 
nity are so simple, and so little at variance with each 
other, that in the early stages of a nation's growth, the 
senate may be considered as the personification of the 
w T hole people. The business of a popular branch of 
the legislature, being to check, counterbalance, and 
modify, comes naturally afterwards, and as a conse- 
quence of the growth of new and diverse interests. 

The third proposition will probably be read with 
some surprise ; but, prejudice apart, is it not a more 
just ground of surprise (so far as regards the British 
portion of such a peerage) that among all the plans 
for colonial government, and the establishment and 
formation of colonies, a principle so essentially charac- 
teristic of the social polity of Great Britain should 
have been altogether disregarded I 

For a practical proof of the importance of pro- 
viding at the earliest period of the growth of a colony, 
for the existence of a branch of the legislature distinct 
from that which represents and is elected by the 
people, we need only call to mind one of the recom- 
mendations of a great statesman whose loss we now 
deplore, respecting the most important case of colonial 
disorder that has recently occurred. At the close of 
the celebrated Report of the late Earl of Durham, 
are to be found the following remarks upon the con- 
stitution of a legislative council for the Canadian 
provinces. 

The constitution of a second legislative body for the united 
legislature involves questions of very great difficulty. The 
present constitution of the legislative councils of these pro- 
vinces has always appeared to me inconsistent with sound 



124 



principles, and little calculated to answer the purpose of placing 
the effective check which I consider necessary on the popular 
branch of the legislature 

The attempt to invest a few persons, distinguished from 
their fellow-colonists neither by birth or hereditary property, 
and often only transiently connected with the country, with 
such a power, seems only calculated to ensure jealousy and bad 
feelings in the first instance, and collision at last 

It will be necessary for the completion of any stable scheme 
of government, that parliament should revise the constitution 
of the legislative council, and — by adopting every practicable 
means to give that institution such a character as would enable 
it, by its tranquil and safe, but effective working, to act as an 
useful check on the popular branch of the legislature, — pre- 
vent a repetition of those collisions which have already caused 
such dangerous irritation. 

In this opinion Lord Durham does not stand 
alone. Those who are opposed to many of his 
views and principles allow that, in this instance, he 
precisely indicated the great exigency and desideratum 
of the case. But they say that the materials out of 
which such an improved house of legislature should 
be formed are nowhere to be found, and that w r e have, 
therefore, no means of getting out of the difficulty. 
And yet the source of the difficulty and the mode, 
therefore, of obviating it in future, seems to be suffi- 
ciently indicated by the terms in which he states it. 

The analogy which some persons have attempted to draw 
between the House of Lords and the Legislative Councils seems 
to me erroneous. The constitution of the House of Lords is 
consonant with the frame of English society; — and, as the 
creation of a precisely similar body in such a state of societ} 7 " as 
that of these colonies is impossible, it has always appeared to 
me most unwise to attempt to supply its place by one which 
has no point of resemblance to it, except that of being a non- 
elective check on the elective branch of the Legislature. 

It is therefore most anxiously to be desired, for the 
future completeness and stability of the constitution 
of New Zealand, that the deficiency here indicated 
should be supplied beforehand. That the germ of its 



125 



future society should be of such a sort as to produce 
all the necessary materials for embodying that power 
which affords the natural counterpoise to the popular 
interests and tendencies of the community. Nor is it 
required in order to fulfil this hope that any portion of 
the future society of New Zealand should be distin- 
guished by extraordinary splendour and excessive 
wealth; for these circumstances, though inevitably 
mixed up with our conceptions of an upper house of 
legislature from w^hat we witness at home, are by no 
means necessary to the moral and mental accomplish- 
ment, and the relative social position which we should 
look for in such a body. 

But to bring this arrangement into consonance 
with the institutions and established practice of our 
country, it would be necessary that the persons forming 
such a body should not only possess comparative 
wealth and high moral and intellectual qualifications, 
but also, to a great extent, be descended from families 
of ancestral reputation in Great Britain. This would 
be one great means of making the colony a counter- 
part of the parent state, and would also promote a 
strong feeling of reciprocal affection and allegiance 
between the two countries. It seems scarcely neces- 
sary to contend that such persons would be the best 
qualified to form a council of government for the 
colony, and there is throughout the whole British 
population, when under the influence of their genuine 
feelings, such an affection and respect for the ancient 
gentry of the land, whether ennobled or not, that, 
could some scions from the venerable tree be carried 
over and take root in New Zealand, they would be 
followed by a large number of firm friends and faithful 
retainers, and be a centre of union and strength for 
the best and most English portion of the community. 

Nor should we overlook the moral qualifications 
which are most likely to belong to persons of such a 
class. 



126 



In that remarkable passage of Bacon's on the sub- 
ject of colonization, in which he says that it is a 
shameful and unblessed thing to take the scum of the 
people with whom to plant. He adds a recommen- 
dation that the persons on whom the government of 
the colony should depend ought rather to be 4 4 noble- 
men and gentlemen than merchants, for they look ever 
to the present gain. r> 

This also reminds me of a curious passage quoted 
from Harrington in the fine account of Sir Alexander 
Ball contained in Coleridge's Friend: — 

41 There is something first in the making of a com- 
monwealth ; then in the governing of it ; and last of 
all in the leading of its armies ; which though there 
be great divines, great lawyers, great men in all ranks 
of life, seems to be peculiar only to the genius of a 
gentleman. For so it is in the universal series of 
history, — that if any man has founded a commonwealth, 
he was first a gentleman. Such also as have got any 
fame as civil governors have been gentlemen or per- 
sons of known descent. 1 ' 

The spirit of this quaint passage may perhaps be 
somewhat too exclusive, but I think we shall all ac- 
knowledge the correctness of thought with which 
Coleridge expresses himself in another place, where 
he commends Solon for having attached authority to 
44 high birth and property, or rather to the moral dis- 
cipline, the habits, attainments, and directing motives, 
on which he calculated (not indeed as necessary and 
constant accompaniments, but yet) as the regular and 
ordinary results of comparative opulence and renowned 
ancestry." 

But whatever opinion may be entertained as to 
the abstract question, it will doubtless be conceded 
that nothing could be more conducive to the welfare 
of the state about to be founded in New Zealand, than 
for the various bodies of which it will consist, to be 



127 



led out, planted and governed by a number of high 
principled and accomplished men of well-known 
English families, and possessing that general acquaint- 
ance with affairs which is acquired during the course 
of a liberal education, and by habitual intercourse 
with the superior classes. 

And I cannot but think that if the authorities 
competent to realize such a project were convinced of 
its expediency, the difficulties in the way of its exe- 
cution would disappear. The desire of occupying a 
high station in the legislature of an empire, of found- 
ing a noble family, and of connecting one's name with 
the progress of a nation's affairs, is so closely inter- 
woven into all hearts, and especially into such as 
possess any touch of nobleness and generosity, that 
there would be no want of persons possessing all the 
necessary qualifications for such a charge, should the 
crown of England consent to place them in that high 
and important post that we have described. 

If the best and noblest of our countrymen are 
willing to spill their blood in battle, and if the most 
honourable boon that a grateful country can bestow on 
military heroism, is a seat among the hereditary legis- 
lators of our land, surely there is something in the 
work of laying the foundation of an empire, and 
handing down to one's own descendants the illustrious 
charge of rearing it to maturity, wdiich would offer a 
sufficient inducement even to the noblest blood of 
England, to make some momentary sacrifice for so 
great an honour. 

But to this enterprise there would be a further 
motive less alloyed with selfish ambition, but not less 
truly glorious. There is no subject which excites so 
great a display of interest among the most estimable 
and well constituted minds of all ranks and parties 
as the dawn of civilization and religion over the dark 
places of the world. Hitherto, however, the single 



128 



agency that we have thought it necessary to adopt in 
order to hasten its arrival has been that of Christian 
missions ; and, valuable as this agency undoubtedly 
is for the conversion of sinners, it is a vital error to 
suppose that it is intended or calculated to effect the 
complicated work of civilization. It is well known 
that the great majority of the missionaries who have 
been employed in uncivilized countries have been men 
of most humble circumstances and limited education, 
with no knowledge of secular affairs, no qualification 
in fact beyond that of skill in some handicraft employ- 
ment and zeal in their religious avocations. That" 
such an order of men may be made instrumental of 
much good in any country, no Christian can doubt ; 
but that they are qualified for the delicate and diffi- 
cult work of giving form to the rude elements of 
society no man of reflection will assert. 

But it is something far greater even than this 
which has to be done in New Zealand. The prospect 
which is there presented to us is something more than 
a common scheme of civilization. We behold there 
at this moment the co-existence of a number of very 
remarkable circumstances which impress us with the 
belief that nothing but wise direction is required for 
the speedy formation of a great characteristic empire; 
and of this empire, justice, wisdom, and the fitness of 
things, no less than the often repeated declarations of 
Great Britain, imperatively demand that the native 
people should form a great, dignified, and influential 
portion. 

What distinguishes the present from all other 
cases of the formation of a new empire is. that here 
the native race, instead of being depressed, is to be 
elevated. To this, both the British Government and 
all who have anything to say to New Zealand coloni- 
zation, have over and over again pledged themselves 
both by implication and direct assertion. And if this 



129 



is neglected, we not only violate justice by depriving 
a people of what we have solemnly acknowledged to 
belong to them, and by inflicting injury on those who 
have conferred on us the greatest benefits; but we 
stand convicted before the world as false dealers and 
breakers of our word. 

Thus two of the greatest purposes which man can 
effect by his fellow-men have simultaneously to be 
performed. The heroic work of colonization, which, 
when carried on in its true spirit, conveys to a distant 
shore, not a rabble of needy adventurers, but a vigor- 
ous counterpart of the parent state. And the heroic 
work of civilization, or, more properly, social organi- 
zation, which calls men from wilds and forests to 
build cities, and form themselves into well-governed 
communities ; a work of which, notwithstanding all 
our efforts, we have no example in modern history, 
but of which there is some glimmering tradition in 
the records of very ancient nations, and which sheds 
a radiance of poetic glory over such names as those of 
Orpheus or Amphion*. 

Were the work of colonization the only one to be 
performed, and were there no natives in New Zealand, 
or could we make them serfs, it would still be desi- 
rable to send out and establish there a body of men 
who should feel their private interest to be bound up 
with that of the new country, and be qualified and 
empowered to discharge deliberative and legislative 
functions with the perfect confidence of the parent 

* Sylvestres homines sacer interpresque deorum, 
Csedibus et victu faedo deterruit Orpheus ; 
D ictus ob hoc lenire tigres, rabidosque leones. 
D ictus et Amphion, Thebanse conditor arcis, 
Saxa movere sono testudinis, et prece blanda 
Ducere quo vellet. Fuit hsec sapientia quondam^ 
Publica privatis secernere, sacra profanis ; 
Concubitu prohibere vago ; dare jura maritis ; 
Oppida moliri ; leges incidere liguo. 

K 



i 



130 



state, and the respect and approbation of all mankind. 
And it is impossible that any men could be so well 
qualified for such a task as those who should deserve 
to be selected out of the higher classes of the British 
gentry to form the senatorial order of the future 
nation. 

But this plan would have another great advantage 
distinct from, but co-ordinate with, and auxiliary to 
the former one ; namely, that of making the supreme 
rule of Great Britain perfectly consistent with the 
retention in the hands of the New Zealand chiefs of 
all that is substantial and important in their sovereign 
rights. Nay, more, of bringing into distinct form 
and visible body those rights which at present only 
exist in embryo, while the fact of their existing only 
in embryo does not release Great Britain from the 
solemn and sacred duty of respecting them, and of 
taking the utmost care and pains lest they should be 
stifled in their birth. 

The nature of these embryo sovereign rights may 
be best collected from the following passage of an old 
author, concerning the sovereignty of our own island 
at an early period of its history. The author to whom 
I refer is Speed, and he writes as follows respecting 
the opinion of a previous historian : — 

" It seemeth by him and other latine writers the 
best recorders of kingdomes affaires, this Hand was 
gouerned rather after the maner of an aristocratic, 
that is, by certaine, great nobles and potent men, then 
under the commaund of any one as an absolute mo- 
narch; though herein is a difference, in that in the 
aristocraticall regiment, the rulers are all peers of one 
commonwealth ; whereas here so many princes so many 
severall publike weals. n 

In the present state of the New Zealand chieftains 
they are without that connecting bond which seems 
essential to the very idea of sovereignty considered as 



131 



the attribute of a state. They possess no characteristic 
features of government which enable us to pronounce 
under what description of " regiment " or " public 
weal" they may be classed. But as the Latin 
authors, to whom Speed refers, designated the early 
social system of this island by the name of an aristo- 
cracy, because that was the regular form of govern- 
ment which, viewed in regard to the rights possessed 
and exercised, it most nearly resembled ; so it is clear 
that the form of government, into coincidence with 
which the social state of New Zealand might most 
easily be brought, would be an aristocracy governed 
by a uniform system of laws ; each chief being magi- 
strate and executor of the laws in his own sphere, and 
the work of legislation and deliberation on the affairs 
of the country being carried on by the whole body of 
the chiefs assembled in a common council, and acting 
as peers of one commonwealth. And that this is the 
form of government which natural sense assigns to 
New Zealand, appears from the British Resident 
having assembled together a congress of chiefs at the 
Bay of Islands to declare their independence, and pre- 
sent them with a national flag. 

But who can doubt that a state so constituted 
would be governed far more safely, with far greater 
convenience and security both to people and chiefs, if 
there was one presiding power over the whole, whe- 
ther a native monarch or a lord-lieutenant appointed 
by Great Britain \ 

That it is impossible to establish a native mo- 
narchy has long been evident, and indeed that the 
native chiefs should form themselves into an assembly 
of " peers of one commonwealth" to govern the coun- 
try according to the " aristocraticall regiment" is 
equally unlikely. But who will say that it is not 
within the power of the crown of England, the zealous 
vindicator and natural protector of the rights of the 

K 2 



132 



New Zealand chiefs, to preserve and defend, or rather 
to develope, define, and consolidate these rights, and 
bring them into their most healthy and beneficial 
exercise, by associating with them as peers of the 
same commonwealth a chosen body of her most worthy 
sons, and placing over the whole a dignified represen- 
tative of her own majesty ] 

The native chiefs, it is true, could at present take 
but little share in the deliberations of such an assem- 
blv. but their dignity would be preserved, they would 
meet each other, no longer as enemies, but as friends, 
and councillors together. There would be no time 
lost if they had to spend a whole generation in acqui- 
ring the idea of an organized realm, and of an assem- 
blv meeting; and deliberating as peers of such a realm. 
The honour of the whole aboriginal race would be 
kept up by the distinction thus conferred upon their 
chiefs. They would be a constant memento to their 
peers of the British race that the interests of the 
natives were of equal importance with the interests of 
the British, and they would themselves very soon 
acquire such a knowledge of the meaning of their pro- 
ceedings as to be able to protect themselves against 
anvthing manifestly injurious to their country. In 
the mean time they might be invested with certain 
executive and magisterial functions, each in his own 
peculiar sphere. — which would teach them the nature 
of law, — which would make them useful agents in the 
civil polity of the country. — and which would tend to 
keep up their dignity: three most important purposes 
in promoting the social organization of the new coun- 
try. ~ m 

If such a scheme as this for the fulfilment of the 
utmost wishes of philanthropy respecting the native 
people, and the formation of a great British dynasty, 
identical in all its parts with the British nation itself, 
were placed before the nobility and the ancestral gen- 



133 



try of Great Britain ; and if the rulers of England 
had sufficient faith in the excellence of our consti- 
tution and in the progress of empires, to call on her 
best sons to join in such a project, might we not hope 
that there is enterprise, valour, and virtue enough to 
undertake it among the worthiest of our land ; and 
that, by the blessing of God, we should do that for the 
natives of New Zealand which has never yet been 
done for any of the coloured races of the world ? 

Perhaps it will be said that the consequence of 
such a measure would be the creation of too formid- 
able a power ; but is it not better to create a great 
friendly power, than to suffer a great hostile power to 
create itself? 

According to the old, or rather the early modern, 
and still recent system of forming colonies, it seems to 
have been forgotten that they were the seeds of future 
empires; for we see no evidence of any precaution 
having been taken to provide beforehand for the wants 
which an empire must experience in its growth and 
progress to maturity. Hence the powers of the new 
state have grown up of themselves, and have often 
been of a growth no less dangerous than rapid and 
vigorous. 

It was well said by the Bishop of London at a 
meeting of the Society for promoting Christian Know- 
ledge, held with a view to the establishment of bishop- 
rics in the colonies, that the United States would 
never have separated from Great Britain if the Church 
of England, under its complete episcopal form of 
church government, had been established there. 

But how much more certainly would this con- 
nexion have been preserved if, together with an esta- 
blishment of the Church of England in her full order, 
beauty, and completeness, there had been given to her 
as the groundwork of her legislature, an ample body 
of her nobility, invested with titles of honour, and 



134 



forming a house of peers for her transatlantic empire i 
If, instead of neglecting and discouraging, or leaving 
merely to the impulse of their own adventurous spirits, 
those many ardent arid noble souls, whose names are 
connected with the discovery and colonization of Ame- 
rica, and who were among the most ancient families 
of our land, she had made them peers of the new 
country, how different would the history of America 
have been ! But, alas, the time of the colonization of 
America was a time of dissolution, not of organiza- 
tion, — a time when the principle of Progression fear- 
fully overbalanced the principle of Permanence*. 

Had it been the design of Great Britain to raise 
on a distant soil a young counterpart of herself, she 
should have recollected that as labourers were required 
to till the ground, and architects to build cities, and 
mechanics and artizans to supply the wants of social 
life, and merchants to draw forth the natural resources 
of the country : so legislators were required to order 
and govern the state. And she should not only have 
permitted but provided, that, from the very first outset 
of the new commonwealth, there should be a class 
of men fitted in every point by birth, by feeling, 
by education, by superiority to insignificant strifes 
and petty quarrels, and by a far-sighted acquaint- 
ance with the principles of government and human 
nature, to discharge the functions of her own here- 
ditary councillors. There was no want of materials at 
the colonization of America for giving the future 
empire a perpetual succession of legislators devoted to 
the welfare of the parent state, and qualified by high 
feelings of honour and high mental endowments for 
rearing and upholding the fabric of government. And 
the noblest opportunities were granted to successive 
monarchs, from Henry VIII. downwards, for forming 
on the western shores of the Atlantic an exact coun- 
terpart of Great Britain, with all its characteristic 
* See Coleridge's Church and State. 



135 



institutions, and all its high and dignified associations, 
added to the spirit of youthfulness and enterprise, and 
comparative hardiness and frugality, for which colonies 
must always afford greater necessity than the mother- 
country* 

Nor was there any want of events to call attention 
to the necessity of providing this element of social 
order for the incipient state. The peculiar circum- 
stances, the political exigencies and difficulties of the 
American settlements, were forced again and again 
upon the attention of successive monarchs, and yet it 
never seems to have occurred to them that they were 
the germs of future empires ; they seem never to have 
regarded them in any other light than as a small band 
of Englishmen struggling for subsistence on a distant 
shore, for whom certain laws and regulations were 
necessary, and to whom it was expedient to grant cer- 
tain privileges, but for whose great future political 
wants it was quite unnecessary to make any pro- 
vision. 

It is asserted by Robertson, with great appearance 
of reason, that the early mode of governing colonies 
originated in the grant of America to the crown of 
Spain by the Pope. By this grant it was considered 
that the new country became the absolute property of 
the monarch, and that he could rule it with an exclu- 
sive reference to his own interests. The example set 
by Spain was followed by the other colonizing powers 
of Europe, and the relation between parent states and 
colonies became one, not of protection and mutual 
benefit, but of dominion on the one hand and obe- 
dience on the other. 

But colonies cannot always remain in a state of 
absolute subjection to the mother-country. Either 
by concession or by violence, a self-governing power 
will sooner or later be developed within them. Sooner 
or later they will demand those institutions by which 



136 



the sense of the people is enabled to declare itself, and 
become the law of the land. It depends upon the 
original care and prudent forethought of the mother 
country whether they shall be trained up to the due 
exercise of these powers, and be themselves moulded 
into the best form of polity, and firmly attached in 
sympathies, character, and allegiance to the parent 
state ; or whether they shall acquire these powers in a 
random way, according to the pressing exigencies of 
particular times, and led on by the accidental energy 
of particular minds, actuated by a rebellious spirit, 
and having " vecorepL^eiv'' for their motto. 

' The people will at length demand a representative 
assembly, and a representative assembly can easily be 
formed ; but where, unless it be provided beforehand, 
will be that other assembly which is equally essential 
to the idea of a state " anything well ordered," and 
which, " by its tranquil and safe, but effective work- 
ing, shall act as an useful check upon the popular 
branch of the legislature V 

In the case of New Zealand, and of every other 
colony which from its circumstances seems likely to 
be the germ of a future empire, there is a present 
exigency and there must arise a future one. A pre- 
sent exigency to possess at once a body of councillors 
qualified to deliberate from the first upon the affairs 
of the country, and from identification of interest with 
the soil, and permanent and territorial connexion with 
the rest of the people, more likely to determine wisely 
by their collective wisdom than any single governor, 
however wise, having only a temporary and official 
connexion with the country; and a future exigency 
of that kind which has been so strongly felt in Canada, 
to possess an effective upper house to discharge the 
functions of a senate, and act as a check upon the 
popular branch of the legislature. Can we doubt that 
on both of these accounts it would be England's best 




wisdom to use the necessary means for gathering and 
sending out as the leaders of New Zealand coloniza- 
tion, such a body of men as she could safely invest 
with the titles and functions of an hereditary peer- 
age*. 

It would be easy to dilate on the many social and 
economical advantages which would accrue to the 
whole New Zealand community from the establish- 
ment of such an order of men upon its shores, the 
impulse it would give to the best kind of colonization, 
and the guarantee it would afford for the cultivation 
in New Zealand of everything which is most admi- 
rable at home ; but I shall content myself with 
making the following extract from Blackstone respect- 
ing the principle of an hereditary branch of legis- 
lature : — 

The distinction of rank and honours is necessary in every 
well-governed state, in order to reward such as are eminent 
for their services to the public in a manner the most desirable 
to individuals, and yet without burden to the community ; 
exciting thereby an ambitious yet laudable ardour, and generous 
emulation in others. And emulation or virtuous ambition is 
a spring of action, which, however dangerous or invidious in a 
mere republic, or under a despotic sway, will certainly be 
attended with good effects under a free monarchy — where, 
without destroying its existence, its excesses may be conti- 
nually restrained by that superior power from which all 
honour is derived. Such a spirit, when nationally diffused, 
gives life and vigour to the community ; it sets all the wheels 
of government in motion, which, under a wise regulator, may 

* It is obvious that the material means of establishing such a 
body exist now as they never did before, — namely, in the recently- 
adopted principle of concentration, and the rapid increase which is 
thereby given to the value of land. Properties amply extensive to 
endow an hereditary peerage could be now purchased in New 
Zealand at a comparatively cheap rate, and with the great impulse 
which by an enlarged and magnificent plan of settlement might be 
given to the colonization of the country, these lands would soon 
acquire such a value as to support their possessors in a manner cor- 
responding to their stations, and keep their dignity on a level with 
the increasing prosperity of the country. 



138 



be directed to any beneficial purpose ; thereby every individual 
may be made subservient to the public good, while he princi- 
pally means to promote his own particular views. A body of 
nobility is also more peculiarly necessary in our mixed and 
compounded constitution, in order to support the rights of both 
the Crown and the people, by forming a barrier to withstand 
the encroachments of both. It creates and preserves that 
gradual scale of dignity which proceeds from the peasant to 
the prince, rising like a pyramid from a broad foundation, and 
diminishing to a point as it rises. It is this ascending and 
contracting proportion that adds stability to any government, 
for when the departure is sudden from one extreme to another, 
we may pronounce that state to be precarious. The nobility, 
therefore, are the pillars which are reared from among the 
people more immediately to support the throne, and if that falls, 
they must also be buried under its ruins ; and since titles of 
nobility are thus expedient in the state, it is also expedient 
that their owners should form an independent and separate 
branch of the legislature. If they were confounded with the 
mass of the people, and, like them, had only a vote in electing 
representatives, their privileges would soon be borne down 
and overwhelmed by the popular torrent, which would effec- 
tually level all distinctions. It is therefore highly necessary 
that the body of nobles should have a distinct assembly, dis- 
tinct deliberations, and distinct powers from the commons. 

What Blackstone here contemplates, is a house of 
lords as it exists in a fully developed constitution. 
What this essay describes is something which may be 
at once the germ of such a body, and the present great 
national council of New Zealand. I have said 
scarcely anything about the provision of a House of 
Legislature to be elected by the people, not from an 
oversight of the inevitable necessity for the eventual 
formation of such a house, but because I think the 
legislative body that I have described would at first 
be sufficient for the government and public welfare of 
the whole community, as those distinct interests which 
require to be represented by an elective house of 
legislature cannot be expected to arise until the whole 
apparatus of society has been for some time in motion. 
We shall not succeed in making our colony a counter- 



139 



part of the mother- country by a servile and artificial 
imitation of the outward frame of her institutions, 
but by inserting into its soil such roots of a future 
constitution as shall naturally grow into those forms 
which give its character and value to our own. The 
mode which has hitherto been adopted in planting 
colonies has naturally tended to make them nurseries 
of democracy. 

The objections against the principle of an here- 
ditary element in a constitution are neither weighty 
nor generally held. The practice and common feelings 
of our countrymen agree in awarding worth and 
honour to the aristocratic branch of our community, 
and it is not likely that the example of any modern 
democracies will shake the natural faith which 
throughout all ages has been placed in hereditary 
honour and virtue, however ready we may be to ac- 
knowledge that honour and virtue are not the neces- 
sary, though they are the natural, consequences of high 
birth and hereditary wealth. We are also to con- 
sider that these institutions are not castes, and that 
the hereditary branch of our constitution is in a state 
of constant change by the extinction of old families, 
and the introduction into its body of men of high 
promise from other ranks. How different from the 
case of democratic America, where caste does exist in 
its most odious and debasing form ! How different 
also from the morbid separations in society which are 
naturally engendered by convict colonization ! 

I am perfectly sensible of the anomalous character 
that would belong to a council composed in part of 
New Zealand chiefs and in part of English gentlemen ; 
but I think it would not be difficult, while conceding 
to the native chiefs, and securing to their descendants 
an hereditary right of legislating for their country, 
to provide against their voting on questions respecting 
which there might be a strong difference of opinion 



140 



among the British portion of the Senate, and by which 
the native interests would not be effected. Their 
honorary distinctions should be in all respects the 
same as that of the British Peers, but their political 
privilege should rather be that of assessors than of 
councillors. As regards the present generation of 
chiefs, it should rather be a school for the formation 
of legislators than a legislative assembly. While in 
all questions relating to native interests their unani- 
mous dissent should amount to a veto. In all this 
there would be difficulties, but we should reflect that 
these New Zealanders are now the lords of the land ; 
and that were they unanimously to insist upon their 
independence, England could not exercise one single 
act of authority upon their shores. Our plan, as 
regards them, grows out of the peculiar exigencies of 
the case, and is intended to give form to the embryo 
rights of sovereignty, which we acknowledge them to 
possess. 

It would also be a great mistake to suppose, be- 
cause they are uncivilized, that they have the same 
inaptitude for deliberating on state affairs which the 
unlettered part of our own population would have. 
It is, I conceive, one of the redeeming points of savage 
life that the people at large do possess a tolerable 
acquaintance with the customs and institutions of 
their country, and we know that they are in the habit 
of holding assemblies and deliberating upon measures 
of public interest ; and if such an expedient as this 
were not adopted for representing the native interests, 
it would be very difficult to devise any plan by which 
such a representation could be secured to them in the 
popular branch of the legislature. 

THE END. 



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